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 POCALYPTIC SKETCHES; 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 BOOK OF REVELATION. 
 
 DELIVERED IS THE 
 
 LARGE ROOM, EXETER HAU, IX 1847-48. 
 
 THE KEY. JOHN GUMMING, D. D. 
 
 MINISTER OF THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL CHURCH, 
 CROWS COURT, LITTLE RUSSELL STREET, COVEST GARDEN. 
 
 ' Surely I come quickly : Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 
 
 REV. xxii. 20. 
 
 TENTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 .TBLISHED BY HALL, VIRTUE, AND CO., 
 
 23, PATER XOSTER ROW : 
 
 SHAW, SOUTHAMPTON ROW. 
 
 18-49.
 
 JOHN CHILDS AND SON, BUNGAY.
 
 DEAR MADAM, 
 
 I FEEL it no ordinary gratification to be allowed 
 to dedicate these Apocalyptic Sketches to you. I do 
 so not merely because you have expressed a deep interest 
 in the subject, or liberally contributed, in common with 
 others dear to you, to every appeal I have made in the 
 course of their delivery, alike for the object to which 
 the proceeds of the sale are devoted, and for others no 
 less important, but, primarily, because you belong to a 
 family associated for nearly a century, more or less 
 directly, with the Church in Crown Court, in which you 
 have so long worshipped. 
 
 Your maternal ancestors were members of it long 
 before my day. Your dear mother and her sisters, the 
 Countess of Guildford and the Marchioness of Bute, 
 were baptized within its walls. Above all, the large, 
 benevolent, and open heart of him whom the world 
 itself pronounced to be the noblest specimen of " the 
 old English gentleman," expressed itself in frequent 
 and liberal contributions to its poor contributions nof 
 blazoned before the world, but detected by the minister 
 of the gospel in his errands of love. 
 
 2096840
 
 IV 
 
 In Sir Francis Burdett, your beloved father, the 
 multitude saw the politician, the patriot, the popular 
 representative ; but the minister of Christ heard " the 
 ear that heard him bless him, and the eye that saw him 
 give witness to him, because he delivered the poor that 
 cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help 
 him, and the blessing of him that was ready to perish 
 came upon him, and he caused the widow's heart to sing 
 for joy." 
 
 Living stones form the noblest monument " I was an 
 hungred and ye gave me meat, thirsty and ye gave me 
 drink, naked and ye clothed me," the most eloquent 
 epitaph and the recollections of full hearts, the justest 
 panegyric. 
 
 I have reason to believe that great good was done 
 during the six months we met for worship in Exeter 
 Hall. Five thousand, it is believed, listened each Sun- 
 day evening to these lectures, very many of whom were 
 connected with no place of worship at all. 
 
 The enlarged Church into which we have again 
 entered, is now capable of receiving a congregation of 
 sixteen hundred and upwards. 
 
 May He who is Alpha and Omega, the First and the 
 Last the Lamb upon the throne, be in the midst of us. 
 May He be with you for ever and ever ; and 
 
 I remain, 
 
 My Dear Madam, 
 With much respect and esteem, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 JOHN GUMMING. 
 
 May I, 1848.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 WHEN these Lectures were begun in Exeter Hall, 
 during the period occupied in the enlargement of 
 the Church of which the Lecturer is the minister, 
 not a few predicted that the author would be 
 led into rash and questionable theories in investi- 
 gating a subject confessedly beset with difficulties. 
 But by the blessing of God, and the exercise of cau- 
 tion and prayerful study, all has ended more than 
 satisfactorily. The unprecedentedly large masses 
 of persons of every denomination, and of no deno- 
 mination at all, who overflowed the spacious Hall 
 in which they were delivered, and the growing at- 
 tention excited in the minds of these audiences, 
 and the saving, and he may be allowed to add, 
 very striking impressions, made on unconverted 
 minds by the means of the solemn truths they 
 heard, are all signs and tokens that call for hum- 
 ble gratitude to God. 
 
 Numerous requests were made for their public- 
 ation. A short-hand writer was therefore en- 
 gaged, who took down a verbatim report of every 
 lecture. These reports, often very imperfect, the
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 author has corrected ; and though the work is not 
 all he could desire, it will yet be found a substan- 
 tial summary of his discourses on the Apocalypse. 
 
 Already 130 and upwards have been realized 
 by the sale of these Lectures, which the author has 
 devoted to the Church Building Fund ; and by 
 means of this sum, and another placed in his 
 hands, he has paid for every thing in the shape of 
 ornament, such as it is, in the Church in Crown 
 Court, arid thus the donations of the congregation 
 have been expended exclusively for the mere en- 
 largement of the building. 
 
 It is the earnest prayer of the Lecturer that these 
 and all his labours may redound to the glory of 
 God, and to the good of souls. 
 
 March, 1848.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE TENTH EDITION. 
 
 WHEN these Lectures were committed to the 
 press, I had no idea that the interest expressed by 
 those who heard them delivered would extend to 
 so many others beyond their circle. The volume 
 has attained a very large circulation indeed, and 
 has excited, as numerous letters addressed to me 
 show, very general attention. It is to me matter of 
 unspeakable gratitude to God, that I have been led 
 and enabled to direct the stirring truths contained 
 in the Apocalypse toward the personal and prac- 
 tical instruction of hearer and. reader, and that 
 wherever these Lectures may be perused, the reader 
 shall not lay them down without having been 
 often and earnestly reminded of his responsibility 
 and obligations before God. 
 
 The year 1848, that followed that which was 
 occupied in their delivery, has presented a visible 
 commentary on the predictions of the Apocalypse, 
 and proved, by terrible facts, how just and true are 
 the principles of interpretation so ably and so con-
 
 Vlll PKEFACE TO 
 
 clusively established by Mr. Elliott in his noble 
 and precious work. 
 
 I am truly grateful for the numerous favourable 
 reviews of these Lectures in the periodicals of the 
 day. The only unfavourable notices I have met 
 with, are, one long and elaborate critique in 
 " Woolmer's Exeter Gazette/' one of the organs of 
 the Tractarians ; in which the writer accuses me of 
 hostility to certain principles which the articles and 
 homilies of the Church of England denounce as 
 Popery, but which he and his friends believe to be 
 Catholic verities : the other, in " The Free Church 
 Magazine," in which I am very summarily dealt 
 with, and am charged, without proof adduced, 
 with every sort of sinister end and aim and motive 
 in preaching them, while the principles and texture 
 of the work, which is, after all, the only legitimate 
 subject of criticism, are left untouched. 
 
 With these two exceptions, the "Apocalyptic 
 Sketches " have been favourably noticed by the 
 Press ; and the topics they treat of, so emphatically 
 sustained by facts from Eome Berlin Paris 
 Vienna, have been urged on the attention of all. 
 
 My Lectures on the last two chapters of the 
 Apocalypse, which I think descriptive of the mil- 
 lennial age, are now complete, and will, I trust, 
 cast some new light on subjects somewhat difficult, 
 or at least place in new points of view, and at new 
 angles, duties and privileges and hopes long cher- 
 ished in Christian hearts, and frequently and fully 
 taught in the word of God. 
 
 In the course of 1849, if the Lord spare me, I
 
 THE TENTH EDITION. IX 
 
 hope to deliver and publish, a series of, Lectures on 
 the Seven Churches ; the Apocalyptic addresses 
 to which are so replete with warning, instruction, 
 correction in righteousness, and encouragement 
 specially fitted for the times the unprecedented 
 times in which our lot is cast. 
 
 My conviction has grown in strength, that the 
 main views enunciated in these Lectures are true. 
 If so, how solemn is our position ! how loud a call 
 to missionary effort to personal devotedness to 
 spiritual-mindedness ! 
 
 I have paid special attention to the various ef- 
 forts made, from several quarters, to overturn the 
 principles of interpretation laid down by the author 
 of the Horse. One party, the majority of which is 
 attached to what are called Tractarian principles, 
 oppose the whole chronology of Mr. Elliott, and 
 attempt to show that days and years and months, 
 as used in the prophecy, are to be understood 
 literally. Their reasoning appears to me singu- 
 larly inconsistent and inconclusive. It seems to 
 me to involve a principle of interpretation, which, 
 if carried out consistently, would render the Apoca- 
 lypse a mere kaleidoscope full of varied shapes 
 and colours, but destitute from first to last of any 
 coherency, harmony, or order. 
 
 I have also minutely examined the strictures of 
 Dr. Keith. Apart from the spirit in which they 
 are written, and the very improper motives and 
 conduct so frequently and so undeservedly ascribed 
 to Mr. Elliott, I have no hesitation in stating my 
 conviction, that a more complete failure to over-
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 throw the principles of interpretation set forth by 
 the author of Horse Apocalypticae never came 
 from the pen of man. And if any one desires to 
 see it sifted and utterly disposed of, let him read 
 Mr. Elliott's reply, entitled Vindiciae Horarise. 
 
 But why should Dr. Keith or any other Chris- 
 tian become angry because another interpreter 
 takes a very different view? Is it not possible to 
 differ, and boldly express that difference, without 
 indulging in severe and acrimonious language? It 
 is not our interest that is at stake it is the honour 
 of our Lord-: and, surely, the " truth in love " is 
 our right course in handling so sacred and so 
 solemn a subject. 
 
 In discussing all denominational differences, and 
 still more in discussing theories of prophetic inter- 
 pretation, it becomes us to show to a world, which 
 exaggerates the former and sneers at the latter, 
 that truth is our aim and end, and that love is our 
 temper. 
 
 May it please God to pour out His Spirit upon 
 us all yet more abundantly, to His glory, and to 
 our growth in grace. 
 
 April, 1849.
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 i. 
 
 " The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to 
 show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass ; 
 and he sent and signified it by His angel unto his servant John : 
 who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of 
 Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that 
 readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep 
 those things which are written therein : for the time is at hand." 
 
 REVELATION i. 1 : 3. 
 
 THE members of my own congregation may recollect that 
 some time ago I began a series of addresses, explanatory 
 of the structure, the principles, and the objects of the 
 Apocalypse. I then stated, what I tell you now, that in 
 these expositions I shall produce little that is original, 
 less that is brilliant but I trust much that is really pro- 
 fitable. A great deal has been written upon this book ; 
 much very foolishly more very rashly nothing, how- 
 ever, in vain ; but recently, and especially in the pages 
 of Mr. Elliott's Horce Apocalyptic^, one of the ablest 
 productions on this subject, increased light has been re- 
 flected on the pages of the book of Revelation. I tell 
 you candidly, that I shall beg and borrow from the book 
 of Mr. Elliott all I can ; and I ask you not to acquiesce 
 in his interpretation, because he is a learned man, nor 
 in my opinion, because I agree with him ; but receive 
 only what seems to you to be the just exposition of the 
 words of the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 The name applied to this book is instructive, though 
 I must say not a few Christians practically interchange 
 it with another name of opposite import. The first half 
 of the one name is like that of the other in sound but 
 the whole meaning of the one is diametrically opposite 
 to that of the other. One is the Apocrypha, which 
 means what is hidden the other is the Apocalypse, 
 which means what is revealed and made known. The 
 Apocrypha is the title given to those books which are 
 adopted by the Church of Rome, of human origin, and 
 B 2
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of no value in deciding what is truth ; the Apocalypse is 
 the name of the Divine and inspired book, made known 
 to John in Patmos. On the Apocrypha I am silent, or 
 speak only to condemn it : on the Apocalypse I would 
 that I were far more learned and eloquent, in order that 
 I might adequately illustrate and recommend it. 
 
 The words which are rendered in our version " the 
 Revelation of Jesus Christ," have been misapprehended. 
 It does not mean the revelation made by Jesus Christ, 
 but the revelation of Jesus Christ himself. In other 
 words, it does not mean Christ the revealer, but Christ 
 the revealed ; a revelation, or apocalypse, or portrait of 
 Christ, which was communicated by Christ to John the 
 seer in Patmos. And that I am correct in this inter- 
 pretation will be plain, I think, to your comprehension, 
 from passages where the original word occurs ; and the 
 word apocalypse occurs very frequently in Scripture, but 
 unhappily, in our admirable translation justly the sub- 
 ject of almost universal eulogy there is a change of 
 rendering, though there be none in the original. For 
 instance : in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the first 
 chapter, at the seventh verse, it is in our version " So 
 that ye come behind in no gift ; waiting for the coming 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now in the original it is 
 " waiting for the apocalypse of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 Again : in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the 
 first chapter, at the seventh verse, you will find another 
 rendering, but it is still the same original word : " And 
 to you who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord 
 Jesus shall be revealed from heaven." It is, literally 
 translated "in the apocalypse of the Lord Jesus Christ 
 from heaven." Again : in the First Epistle of St. Peter, 
 the first chapter, and the seventh verse, and also at the 
 thirteenth verse, we meet with the same word, but again 
 differently translated. And here I may remark how 
 great a pity it is that the same word should be the 
 subject of a variety of translations. If it had been 
 translated in one way throughout the New Testament, 
 it would have made the beauty and the force of the 
 meaning of the Spirit of God evolve more vividly. "U'o 
 read, in the First Epistle of Peter, the first chapter, and
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 5 
 
 the seventh verse " That it might be found unto praise, 
 and honour, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." 
 In the original it is "in the apocalypse," in the reve- 
 lation " of Jesus Christ." And in the thirteenth verse 
 of the same chapter " Gird up the loins of your mind, 
 be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be 
 brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 
 Here again it is in the original " in the apocalypse of 
 Jesus Christ." And in all these passages it means, not 
 a disclosure, or revelation, or manifestation made by 
 Christ, but made concerning or of Christ. In other 
 words, the title of this book is not Christ the revealer, 
 but Christ the revealed ; and this revelation of Christ, 
 we are told, was also given by Christ to John His serv- 
 ant, in the Isle of Patmos. 
 
 This book, then, is an inspired portrait of the Son of 
 God ; it is, if I may use the expression, the epiphany of 
 Jesus the full description of His personal glory, to 
 which prophets and martyrs looked forward with waiting 
 hope an apocalypse so brilliant that the sight of the 
 Jew was dazzled by its distant splendour, so much so 
 that he could not see the intervening valleys of Gethse- 
 mane and Calvary, through which Christ had to pass, in 
 order to emerge and inherit His predestined glory. Very 
 beautifully, therefore, the book begins " Behold, He 
 cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him ; " and 
 very appropriately this book closes " Surely, I come 
 quickly, Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus." It be- 
 gins with His advent, and ends with it. That sublime, 
 sustaining, and precious hope is in the eye of the holy 
 seer, when he sat down to receive and record its bright 
 visions, and the same hope is in his eye when he kneels 
 down at the close and cries " Come, Lord Jesus." He 
 had seen and leaned on the bosom of the Sufferer, and 
 he longs to see and reign with his risen and glorified 
 King. May we also sympathize with him, "Whom 
 having not seen, may we love ; and in whom, though 
 now we see Him not, yet believing, may we rejoice with 
 joy unspeakable, and full of glory." 
 
 The distinction between the revelation of Christ in 
 the Apocalypse, and the revelation of Christ in the
 
 6 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Gospels, is briefly this : the Gospels represent Christ the 
 sufferer the Apocalypse depicts Christ the conqueror. 
 The Gospels detail " His agony, His cross, His passion, 
 His bloody sweat," the Apocalypse describes His 
 throne, His " many crowns," and prostrate saints adoring 
 and saying " Unto Him that loved us, and washed us 
 from our sins in His blood, and hath made us kings and 
 priests unto our God, to Him be glory and honour and 
 blessing." In the Gospels we see the shadow of the 
 cross, deep, dark, and palpable to all in the Apocalypse 
 we behold the lustre of the crown shining forth in un- 
 earthly brilliancy. In the Gospels we have Christ a 
 priest at the altar in the Apocalypse we see Christ a 
 King upon His throne ; in the one we have Christ in 
 the robes of Aaron in the other we have Christ in the 
 royalties of David ; in the first we behold Christ the 
 sacrificing priest, the atoning victim in the second we 
 discover Christ with the " many crowns " upon His head, 
 "Lord of lords, and King of kings." Thus, then, the 
 Gospels reveal Christ amid the associations of Calvary 
 the Apocalypse reveals Christ with all the accom- 
 paniments of glory ; each in its place, each for its ob- 
 ject, is the revelation, or the apocalypse of Christ. 
 
 The language in the passage I have selected for ex- 
 position, discourages and discountenances the very po- 
 pular, but I humbly conceive very erroneous idea, that 
 we are not to study, and that we cannot possibly be- 
 come acquainted with things predicted, but not yet per- 
 formed. Most men say, ' Things performed we may 
 study and improve ; but things predicted we have 
 nothing to do with, except to lay them aside on the 
 shelf, and wait till their actual performance casts its 
 light upon them, and thus shapes the dim prophecy into 
 history.' But certainly this idea is not sanctioned in 
 the passage I have selected for exposition ; for this 
 revelation was sent to Christ's servant John, "to show 
 unto His servants things that shall come to pass." It 
 does not read thus " to show unto his servant John," 
 but "to show unto His servants;" the word is in the 
 plural number ; that is, to all Christians. To show 
 them what ? Not merely the things which have already
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 7 
 
 come to pass, but " things which must shortly come to 
 pass" not the facts of the past only, but the events of 
 the future also. Now the popular idea is, that these 
 predicted things we ought not to attempt to interpret, 
 and that it is only performed things that we ought to 
 endeavour to profit by. The statement here, at least, 
 conveys no such impression. It implies that things 
 predicted, or foreshown, are to be studied, because for 
 this very end they are inspired, and that they may, 
 though dimly and darkly as through a glass, be under- 
 stood by the servants and people of God. Daniel ex- 
 plained to the captives in Babylon future things, and 
 thus comforted them, with consolations drawn not from 
 past records, but unfulfilled prophecies. Now comfort 
 cannot be extracted from the unintelligible. Our bless- 
 ed^Lord minutely predicted to His apostles the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem ; and He told them how they were to 
 conduct themselves in the prospect of that destruc- 
 tion. He showed them that responsibilities were in- 
 curred, by their knowing things not yet fulfilled ; and 
 the apostles, we read, and the Christians who fled to 
 Pella, understood and believed the prophecy, and escaped 
 the ruin, having done well in taking heed to the pro- 
 phecy, that shone as a light in a dark place. It is surely 
 very remarkable, and instructive too, that one office of 
 the Holy Spirit of God an office that cannot be ex- 
 plained on the popular presumption we have alluded 
 to is, that " He will show you things to come ; " and 
 the apostle Peter tells us, in his Second Epistle, the first 
 chapter, at the nineteenth verse, that there is "a sure 
 word of prophecy, unto which we do well to take heed, 
 as to a light shining in a dark place ; " and we are told 
 also, in the third chapter, at the first verse " This 
 second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both 
 which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance : 
 that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken 
 before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment 
 of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour : knowing 
 this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, 
 walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the 
 promise of His coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep,
 
 8 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 all things continue as they were from the beginning of 
 the creation." We are told by the apostle Paul, that 
 "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered 
 into the heart of man the things which God hath pre- 
 pared for them that love Him." That is future. But 
 he adds "But he hath revealed them unto us by His 
 Spirit ;" teaching us, therefore, that things which are 
 not yet disclosed as come to pass, are things that we 
 may study. They may not be essential to our personal 
 safety, but they may contribute to our spiritual com- 
 fort, and to the glory and honour and praise of God. 
 Why did the Jews, we may ask, reject the Messiah as 
 the sufferer ? Just because they neglected the study of 
 unfulfilled prophecy. And may not we also be found 
 neglecting privileges, if not despising duties, when we 
 make the book of Revelation that book which we rarely 
 read in our families, or study in our closets, or patiently 
 listen to, when expounded and explained from the pul- 
 pit, by the ministers of Christ. 
 
 It was not so in olden days : for this book was a fa- 
 vourite study with the early Christians. The martyrs 
 of the first three centuries found springs of comfort in 
 the addresses to the seven churches, which refreshed 
 their souls as with the dews of heaven amid the flame?. 
 The Reformers derived from the Apocalypse the most 
 condemning verdicts on the great Western apostacy, and 
 from its description, as from a full and exhaustless 
 arsenal, they drew forth the weapons with which they 
 smote and overthrew the great Dagon of the West, with 
 the most complete success. This holy book seems to 
 me to be a lamp, which sheds light on the history of the 
 last nineteen hundred years, casting illuminating rays 
 into all their perplexing and perplexed events. It 
 shows us Christ in the world as well as in the church 
 ordering and restraining the will of kings and the acts of 
 empire, and educing glory to His Name and prosperity 
 to His church from the wrath of His bitterest enemies. 
 
 In the next place, the Apocalypse, or book of Reve- 
 lation, is stated, at the beginning of the first chapter, to 
 have been written under the inspiration of the Spirit, by 
 John, who testified of the Word of God. There can be
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 9 
 
 no doubt that this was John the evangelist ; his testi- 
 mony was emphatically that of " the Word ;" his Gos- 
 pel is peculiarly the Gospel of " the Word made flesh." 
 The very commencement of his Gospel is " In the be- 
 ginning was the Word ;" and the close of his Gospel is 
 " These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus 
 is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing, ye 
 might have life through His name." That holy name 
 gives music to every sentence, weight to every word, 
 and fragrance to every sentiment in that wonderful pro- 
 duction, the Gospel according to John. And Wetstein 
 and Lardner, two distinguished critics upon the original, 
 as well as on the contents of the Scriptures, have se- 
 lected about thirty or forty texts from the Apocalypse, 
 which contain words and phrases and forms of expres- 
 sion that are almost identical with those used in the 
 Gospel, thus proving that the same John who wrote 
 the Gospel was the writer of the Apocalypse ; and such 
 differences of style, as unquestionably do occur, are to be 
 explained and accounted for by the difference of the sub- 
 jects, and perhaps also of the time. The Gospel was 
 written by John sixty years after the death and resur- 
 rection of Jesus, and was, if I may so speak, a cool and 
 dispassionate retrospect and record of that sublime bio- 
 graphy ; the Apocalypse, on the other hand, was written 
 the very moment its truths were taught and its visions 
 made known the instancy and splendour of the scene 
 making the deeper impression on the heart of the seer, 
 and originating more expressive words. Hence the Apo- 
 calypse contains an eloquence of language, a grandeur 
 of thought, and a magnificence of style, which certainly 
 are not approached by the more prosaic and historical 
 narrative of the Gospel. This difference, however, is, 
 as we have said, easily accounted for ; the subject and 
 date will explain the simplicity of the narrative of the 
 one, and the sublime and poetic ecstasy of the other. 
 
 The time at which the Apocalypse was written, was 
 about the year 97. John was banished to Patmos by 
 the emperor Domitian ; and if we had no other evidence 
 that it was during the reign of Domitian, we have it in the 
 fact that he was the first Roman emperor who adopted
 
 10 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 that mode of punishment. But John's banishment from 
 his earthly home lifted him nearer a heavenly one. He 
 was condemned and banished by a king that died, that 
 he might be favoured and comforted by " the King of 
 kings," that liveth and reigneth for ever. An inner ra- 
 diance was poured into his spirit, that more than com- 
 pensated for his external night. God thus gives His 
 people in all their trying circumstances compensatory 
 elements. In the history of His church, He often makes 
 afflictions beautiful, by weaving through them the rain- 
 bow of His mercy and love. He thus made barren Pat- 
 mos a scene of manifestation of far richer glories than 
 Tabor. He can make the tents of Mesech and the taber- 
 nacles of Kedar repose in a sunshine more glorious than 
 ever fell on the towers of Salem. God's Shechinah often 
 illuminates the desert. Daniel beheld in Babylon bright 
 visions he saw not elsewhere ; John, in Patmos, saw a 
 glory he never witnessed in Jerusalem ; John Bunyan, 
 in his lonely prison, had dreams and visions, approach- 
 ing in their purity and splendour to apocalyptic scenes ; 
 and Martin Luther, during his confinement in Wartburg, 
 translated the Scriptures, and had the enjoyment of a 
 freedom and repose to which thousands outside were 
 strangers. It is the heart, not the house, that makes 
 home. And thus, while the afflictions of God's people 
 abound, their joys abound also. The cloud that is dark- 
 est, is fringed to their eyes with beams of celestial lus- 
 tre, and crushing calamities unbosom by degrees their 
 latent mercies ; and those who have been in the deepest 
 affliction, have been the first to exclaim, each as he 
 emerged from its depths " It was good for me that I 
 was afflicted." 
 
 This book has been recognised as canonical in every 
 age of the Christian church. I will quote only one or 
 two references, but these will sufficiently vindicate it. 
 Perhaps you are aware that the Church of Rome has 
 made the frequent objection, that we Protestants are in- 
 debted to her decision for the possession of the Apoca- 
 lypse at all. They say, the Apocalypse was not admitted 
 by that Church by any public act, or by any synodical 
 decision, till the fifth, if not the sixth century. But
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 11 
 
 if this be true, instead of proving that the Church of 
 Rome has great credit, it rather reflects upon her the 
 greatest discredit for it shows how sleepy that Church 
 must have been, how blind her vision, how forgetful of 
 her duties, seeing that, by her own confession, she failed 
 to recognise as canonical a Divine book during six cen- 
 turies in succession. Does it not also show, how much 
 more trustworthy is private judgment than ecclesiastical 
 decisions, seeing fathers and writers and doctors saw 
 the inspiration of the Apocalypse, and pronounced it to 
 be Divine, while the Church of Rome did not know 
 that it was part of the Sacred Canon at all ? For instance : 
 Ignatius, one of the earliest of the Christian fathers, who 
 lived in the year 107 that is, just ten years after John 
 wrote the Apocalypse quotes several passages from this 
 book, thus proving it was in existence in his day. Po- 
 lycarp, a father and martyr, who lived in the year 108, 
 when he was brought to the faggot to be consumed in 
 the flames, offered up the prayer used in the eleventh 
 chapter of the Book of Revelation, at the seventeenth 
 verse "We give Thee thanks, Lord God Almighty, 
 who was, and is, and is to come." After him, Irenzeus, 
 whose name is associated in its import with peace, and 
 whose writings contain some beautiful appeals on its be- 
 half, quotes portions of the Apocalypse, and adds the in- 
 teresting statement, preserved in the writings of Euse- 
 bius, that John wrote it at the latter end of the reign of 
 Domitian, when in exile at Patmos. Justin Martyr, who 
 lived in the year 140 that is, forty-three years after the 
 Apocalypse was written, not only read it, but wrote an 
 explanation of it. And Eusebius in the fourth century, 
 and Jerome, the most learned of all the Latin fathers, 
 likewise quote it as a portion of the inspired Record, and 
 record their reflections upon it. It is, however, only just 
 to add, that some divines of the fourth century rejected 
 the Apocalypse, on the ground that it contained, as they 
 alleged, prophecies of what they erroneously believed to 
 be a carnal millenium ; just in the same way as some 
 Christians still argue, that the Bible cannot be God's 
 word, because it contains truths that cross their preju- 
 dices, or lay on them duties which they decline to fulfil,
 
 12 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 or unfold the mere outward drapery of stupendous mys- 
 teries, which angels cannot soar to, and which the human 
 imagination cannot of course comprehend. But to argue 
 in this way is to argue most illogically. The divinity of 
 the book rests upon its own basis ; the explanation of 
 the book is to be decided on just and proper principles. 
 I must notice here, that there is a special benediction 
 pronounced upon those who read it. Many people say 
 ' Oh ! the Revelation is full of dark things we ought not 
 to meddle with.' But what does the Spirit of God say ? 
 'Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the 
 words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are 
 written therein." Shall we say it is wrong to read what 
 the Spirit of God has thought it right to record ? Shall 
 we say that the difficulty of interpreting the book is a 
 reason why we should not even read, still less try to un- 
 derstand, what the Spirit of God has inspired ? Shall we 
 hold it perilous to study what the Holy Spirit has pro- 
 nounced it blessed to read, and, by fair inference, pos- 
 sible to understand ? We may read it in a presumptuous 
 spirit that is sinful ; but to attempt to understand it, 
 in a reverent and prayerful spirit that is blessed. Lay 
 aside the presumption, that dictates as eternal truths its 
 own hasty conclusions ; but do not give up the prayerful 
 study and perusal of the book, on the very vestibule of 
 which the Spirit of God has written "Blessed are they 
 that read and hear the words of this prophecy." Far be 
 it from me to conceal, that there is an awful and a solemn 
 anathema pronounced upon all who shall attempt to sub- 
 tract from or add to "the things that are written in this 
 book." At the close of it it is said " If any man shall 
 add unto these things, God shall add unto him the 
 plagues that are written in this book. And if any man 
 shall take away from the words of the book of this pro- 
 phecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of 
 life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which 
 are written in this book." This is an awful announce- 
 ment, which ought to solemnize the mind of every student 
 of it : but if it be perilous to misinterpret it, can it be 
 safe not to read it at all ? Would not the legitimate con- 
 clusion be, not to lay it aside, because there is an ana-
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 13 
 
 thema on him who perverts it, but to open the book, and 
 diligently study it, and pray for the Spirit of God to en- 
 lighten our minds, and lead them to a sober and true 
 exposition, and then we shall be lifted from the anathema 
 that descends upon the wilful misinterpreter, and shall 
 be placed under the blessing that lights on him who 
 reads and understands it ? 
 
 I regard this book, not as a dark and inexplicable 
 hieroglyphic, which it is humility and duty to leave un- 
 opened, but as a light that shines on the dark and trou- 
 bled waters of time those waters over which the church 
 of the redeemed is ploughing her arduous and perilous 
 way ; not like a light upon the stern, leaving useless 
 brilliancy in her wake, but a light upon the prow, show- 
 ing before the beacons it is our safety to avoid, and the 
 course it becomes our duty to pursue, till that day break 
 upon the waste of waters, when the great Pilot himself 
 shall enter into the vessel, and say to the stormy waves 
 around it " Be still ;" and guide her to a haven of per- 
 petual peace. 
 
 Now while I feel that there is much, in the past his- 
 tory of the interpretation of this book, to make us cau- 
 tious and prayerful, I still think there is nothing to 
 warrant neglect. Edward Irving, one of the most gifted 
 minds, but all but fatally shipwrecked, it is true grafted 
 upon this book the most extravagant and monstrous de- 
 lusions ; and because he left behind him explanations as 
 unsound as mischievous, it is argued, that we should not 
 attempt to study and understand where so gifted a ge- 
 nius has failed. But it seems to me that misinterpret- 
 ation in the past, instead of being a reason for neglect, 
 is only a new reason for more prayerful and earnest ef- 
 forts after just and proper interpretation for the future. 
 Abuse is not certainly a reason against use ; past error 
 in the pursuit of truth does not make future success im- 
 possible ; and may it not be true, that the failures of 
 former expositors shall prove the surest pioneers of suc- 
 cess on the part of those that follow ? Every ship that 
 is wrecked in our Channel serves to show to succeeding 
 navies the safe course they are thereafter to pursue. It 
 is thus that the failures of gifted minds who have pre-
 
 14 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 ceded us as interpreters, will help us to make nearer 
 approximation to a clear exposition of that beautiful and 
 holy book, which the Spirit of God has written for our 
 learning. If the people would study the Revelation 
 more, their ministers would be likely to indulge in fan- 
 cies less. It is because you know so little about the book, 
 that ministers have been suffered to make so many mis- 
 interpretations of its meaning. . Study well its history 
 and contents, ponder prayerfully its predictions, and your 
 knowledge will be the best check upon the imagination 
 of the minister. Light in the pew necessitates light in 
 the pulpit. The Bible in the hands and hearts of the 
 people is the surest guarantee for truth from the lips of 
 the preacher. I know that some excellent Christians en- 
 tertain the notion, that their personal salvation is all they 
 have to do with. Far be it from me for one moment to 
 undervalue the necessity of a deep and solemn interest 
 in our personal acceptance before God. What shall it 
 profit a man if he should be able to explain all the mys- 
 teries of the prophets, or gain the whole world, and in- 
 flict on his soul that loss which never can be retrieved ? 
 But, my dear friends, while this is true, and ought to be 
 felt to be true, are we to forget that there is an end even 
 higher than the safety of the soul not indeed in refer- 
 ence to us, but in reference to God ? The glory of God 
 is the end of the universe, and ought to be the first aim 
 of intelligent creatures. If I address members of other 
 communions, let me lay before you a piece of splendid 
 philosophy, as well as true theology, by telling you the 
 first question and answer contained in the catechism 
 which our Scottish children are taught from their earli- 
 est infancy. " What is the chief end of man ?" Not, to 
 save himself ; that is not said. " The chief end of man 
 is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever." We are 
 called on to consult the glory of God first, and our sal- 
 vation next. Yet it is in the pursuit of the former that 
 we never can lose the latter. And whilst, therefore, 
 our personal acceptance before God is an essential thing, 
 which no interest can be a substitute for, which no duty 
 can supersede, we must recollect that if God has revealed 
 a book to evolve His glory, it is not for man, surely not
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 15 
 
 for a Christian, to say ' I have no interest in that glory, 
 nor shall I take any part in making the meaning of the 
 mysteries which reflect it intelligible to others.' 
 
 There are various classes of interpreters, who take 
 different views of the Apocalypse. One class consists of 
 Professor Lee, one of the best Hebrew scholars in Eng- 
 land, and Moses Stewart, an able scholar in America, 
 who believe that the whole of the Apocalypse was ful- 
 filled in the first three or four centuries of the Christian 
 church. This belief I think as untenable as it is absurd. 
 Let any person read the Apocalypse, not in the light of 
 criticism, or with the opinions of learned men, but in 
 the exercise of his own unbiassed judgment, and he will 
 see there are prophecies which have not been performed, 
 visions of glory which have never dawned upon our 
 world, and scenes to be realized, and circumstances to 
 evolve, and dates to be reconciled, of which there is no 
 trace of fulfilment in the past, and certainly no appear- 
 ance in the present. 
 
 There is another class of interpreters, however, who 
 take just an opposite view from that of those to whom I 
 have alluded : these consist of Burgh, Todd, and 
 Maitland, studious and learned men, who believe, that 
 with the exception of the first three chapters, not one 
 single particular of the rest of the Apocalypse has yet 
 been fulfilled. Moses Stewart and Dr. Lee believe that 
 it was all compressed within the first three or four cen- 
 turies Burgh, Todd, and Maitland believe that it must 
 all be compressed into the last three or four years of the 
 Christian sera. 
 
 There is another class, represented by Mr. Birks, an 
 able and acute writer on the subject of prophecy, and 
 Mr. Elliott, (in his Hor<z, which will occupy a place, in 
 reference to unfulfilled prophecy, that Newton's Prin- 
 cipia has occupied in reference to science,) and many 
 other living ministers of the age, who believe that much 
 of the Apocalypse has been fulfilled, but that much 
 more remains yet to be fulfilled ; and that it is our duty 
 to review the first, that we may see light shed on the 
 history of the past, and to study the second, that we
 
 16 AI'OCALYPTIC SKETCIIKS. 
 
 may learn duties, responsibilities, and privileges, in the 
 prospect of what is yet to come. 
 
 I may mention, that some of one class especially, 
 known by the name of Futurists, (that is, persons who 
 believe that the whole of the Apocalypse yet remains 
 to be fulfilled,) are actuated in their views by strong 
 sympathy with Romish tenets I say so, because it is 
 obvious from their writings, that some of those (though 
 not all) who believe the Apocalypse will be fulfilled 
 entirely in the future, have adopted that reasoning 
 because they love and would justify the Church of Rome. 
 It has been the belief of the soundest divines, since and 
 before the days of Martin Luther, that the Babylon 
 delineated there, the woman stained with crimes and 
 intoxicated with the blood of the saints, is the great 
 Western apostacy : but these Tra'ctarian Futurists do not 
 like this interpretation ; it is fatal to their views ; it re- 
 bukes their sympathies ; they cannot, however, get rid 
 of the book, and therefore they have tried to get rid of 
 the interpretation, and thus be left free to welcome 
 Rome as their sister, and proclaim the Vatican " Christ's 
 holy home." But it must be evident that all such rea- 
 soning is false in its premises, and must therefore be 
 pernicious in its conclusions. And I do hope, if you 
 will give me your patient attention, in the course of a 
 few succeeding Sunday evenings, that you will be satis- 
 fied that the main views of Mr. Elliott I do not say all 
 are as rational as they are scriptural and instructive. 
 
 In expounding this book, I must beg to suggest some 
 necessary cautions. We must not seek to be explicit in 
 that which God's Holy Spirit has been pleased to leave 
 dimly revealed. Rash hands must not tear, but sacred 
 hands must reverently draw aside the Apocalyptic veil ; 
 we may not "rush in where angels fear to tread ;" we 
 must not dogmatize where the Spirit of God has not 
 spoken decidedly. We must be content to be ignorant 
 in many places, thankful to be instructed in others, and 
 patient students throughout the whole. 
 
 There is one most important point I wish to impress 
 upon you, and it is this : we must not do as Edward
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 17 
 
 Irving did, pronounce our views of unfulfilled prophecy 
 to be among the very essentials of salvation ; we must 
 not give the least countenance to the idea, that the great 
 truths of evangelical religion are at all to be placed in 
 the same category with any theory of interpretation of 
 unfulfilled prophecy. The first seven seals may or may 
 not refer to the decline of the Roman empire, but there 
 is no doubt that " the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth 
 from all sin ;" the seven last vials may or may not have 
 been begun at the French Revolution, but it is indis- 
 putably true that "Christ is the propitiation for our sins." 
 The first may be true the last must be true ; the first is 
 revealed in symbols, the last is clearly brought to light. 
 We may use peradventures, when we speak of our view 
 of things that are in the future we must use none, when 
 we speak of vital and essential truths. I will allow you 
 to differ from me in explaining prophecy I will allow 
 you to reject my expositions of the Apocalypse, as far as 
 its symbols are involved, but I cannot for one moment 
 consent that there should be any question whether my 
 Saviour be God, or whether his " blood cleanseth from all 
 sin," or whether his righteousness be my only covering, 
 his sacrifice my only trust, his cross the only foundation 
 of my safety, and his crown my happy and imperishable 
 hope. All that I say on unfulfilled prophecy may be 
 wrong what I preach of the gospel I know to be true ; 
 " I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that 
 He is able to keep that which I have committed to him 
 against that day." 
 
 But we are not less earnestly to study the future as far 
 as we are invited to do so ; just as the pious Jews read 
 their prophecies of a suffering Christ, we Christians 
 should study the prophecies of a coming and a glorified 
 Christ. The Jews were taught to look through prophe- 
 cies to a Christ who was to come and suffer we are 
 taught to look for the same Christ in glory. We are 
 taught to take a retrospective view of his sufferings, and 
 a prospective view of his glory ; and as the believing 
 Israelite was cheered by the prospect of the Saviour's 
 advent, as his sacrifice, so the pious Christian, with his 
 foot upon the cross, and his eye upon the throne, ought
 
 18 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 to be cheered, sustained, and comforted by the prospect 
 of his Saviour, who is to "come again the second time, 
 without sin unto salvation, unto all them that look for 
 Him." Sound thoughts on prophecy would seem to me 
 to be especially useful in the day in which our lot is cast. 
 Mr. Faber, Mr. Elliott, Dr. M'Neile, Mr. Bickersteth, 
 the most eminent of those who have directed their atten- 
 tion to the subject, believe that we are upon the verge 
 of the last days. Nor do appearances contradict their 
 views. All moral, social, and political parties are broken 
 and torn asunder, in order I believe to make room for 
 the advent of more glorious things, the triumph of more 
 precious principles : and those will not be least blessed, 
 who shall be found at that day with their loins girt and 
 their lamps burning. 
 
 But whilst discoursing upon prophecy, I must not omit 
 to define the characters that prophecy should interest. 
 I wish not to gratify the curiosity of the unconverted, 
 but to comfort the hearts and instruct the minds of the 
 people of God. You who are strangers to the gospel, 
 have yet to learn its alphabet ; you must have your souls 
 cleansed in Christ's atoning blood, before you may ven- 
 ture to anticipate his presence as with joy. 
 
 Let me ask you, then, Are you among the people of 
 God ? Have you gone to the Saviour, in the depths of 
 your conscious ruin in despair of salvation from any 
 other source, and cast yourselves at his feet, and asked 
 for mercy and forgiveness gratis, through his precious 
 blood ? Those to whom John wrote the Apocalypse, and 
 whose perusal of it he especially desired, are those, we 
 are told in the very chapter from which my text is taken 
 who sing " Unto Him that loved us, and washed us 
 from our sins in his own blood, unto Him be glory for 
 ever and ever." Can you say so ? Can you say " That 
 Saviour is mine ; that sacrifice is mine, and forgiveness 
 for its sake?" If the great changes predicted in the 
 Apocalypse do not overtake us, we may be called upon 
 to see personally, each for himself, a change as great. 
 AVere that beating heart to stand still, were death to lay 
 his hand upon you this night, were the summons to be 
 issued from the throne "Cut him down," let me ask
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 19 
 
 you, my dear brother, my dear sister, would it be well 
 with you ? Is all right between God and you ? Do po- 
 litics interest your affections ? Do the affairs of your 
 household absorb all your thoughts ? Does Mammon oc- 
 cupy your affections ? And have you never sat down, 
 and in the calm and solemn light of eternity asked your 
 conscience that question, to which you must one day and 
 ought now to give an instant response ' Am I still 
 " dead in sins," or am I " a child of God, and an in- 
 heritor of the kingdom of heaven ?"' 
 
 My dear brethren, I hope no one in this vast assembly 
 is hoping that all is right because he has been baptized, 
 or is a member of a Christian church. My dear friends, 
 do you, can you think that baptism gives to all its sub- 
 jects new hearts ? Can baptism give you that Divine 
 life, without which you must die for ever ? I believe, 
 that those who think so, misapprehend altogether man's 
 state by nature. If man's state were a mere swoon, or 
 a mere faint from the influence of sin, then a little water 
 sprinkled on his brow by a minister of Christ from the 
 baptismal font might resuscitate him ; but man is " dead 
 in trespasses and sins ;" and nothing but that voice 
 which shall echo at the last day through the sepulchres 
 of the dead, can quicken that soul which is " dead in 
 trespasses and sins." Be not deceived. Pause and pon- 
 der. " Christ and Him crucified," the ground of your 
 acceptance ; the Spirit and Him sanctifying, your fitness 
 for heaven ; justification by faith alone, the article of a 
 standing or a falling church ; regeneration by the Spirit 
 of God, the article of a living or a dying church ; our 
 personal safety our acceptance before God our title to 
 heaven, and our fitness for its enjoyments, are matters 
 of instant and overwhelming interest. No inquiries into 
 unfulfilled prophecy may be made apologies for indiffer- 
 ence here. Whether in the pages of the evangelist, or 
 in those of the seer, it is "the pure in heart" only that 
 " see God." Christians only can understand the Apoca- 
 lypse ; for them it was written. All other attempts by 
 any beside to interpret, must end in fanaticism or folly. 
 
 c 2
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYTSE. 
 
 " Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his 
 own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and 
 his Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever." 
 
 REV. i. 5, 6. 
 
 SOME have objected to all expositions of the Apoca- 
 lypse, as if such were not preaching the gospel, nor 
 useful and instructive to those that hear them. This is 
 grievous misapprehension. Whatever God has written 
 is surely entitled to our study, as it was meant for our 
 good, and cannot be otherwise than useful to those, for 
 whose learning it was inspired : " all Scripture," says 
 the apostle, "is profitable." The Apocalypse, so far 
 from not being the gospel, is replete with its most pre- 
 cious truths, is inlaid with the testimony, fragrant with 
 the excellence, and illuminated with the glory of the 
 Son of God. It refers backward to the Man of sor- 
 rows, and looks forward to the throned Lamb. Christ 
 is its alpha and omega, and the testimony of Jesus its 
 woof and warp. But for the sake of them, who shrink 
 from expositions of this book, who look at the Apoca- 
 lypse through the mists of prejudice, the misapprehen- 
 sions of ignorance, or any other similar cause, I will 
 address myself this evening to the task of showing how 
 full, how clear, how beautiful is the gospel according to 
 the Apocalypse. 
 
 Leaving my text, which is an epitome of the gospel, 
 I request your attention to such passages as these 
 Rev. v. 9. " Thou art worthy to take the book and to 
 open the seals thereof, for tliou wast slain, and hast re- 
 deemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred,
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYPSE. 21 
 
 and tongue, and nation." This is surely the very music 
 of Calvary floating down from heaven, and breaking on 
 our ears shall I rather say our hearts, this evening in 
 Exeter Hall. This text alone is an epitome of the gos- 
 pel. Rev. v. 12. "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain 
 to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
 and honour, and glory, and blessing" words that come 
 like the chimes of the waves of that sea of glory that 
 spread out their waters about the throne of God, and 
 reflect its glory. 
 
 Rev. vii. 13. "What are these which are arrayed in 
 white robes, and whence came they ? These are they 
 which came out of great tribulation, and have washed 
 their robes and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, 
 iind serve Him day and night in his temple." This is 
 an apocalypse of heaven the character of its tenantry, 
 and the way to reach it. Rev. xiv. 13. "And I heard 
 a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are 
 the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth : Yea, saith 
 the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ; and 
 their works do follow them." This is the trumpet of 
 jubilee sounding in the grave, the finger of God writing 
 their epitaphs on the pious dead the gospel transfigur- 
 ing, by its presence, the very ashes of the dead. Rev. 
 xxi. 6. " I will give to him that is athirst of the foun- 
 tain of the water of life freely." 
 
 Rev. xxii. 17. "And the Spirit and the bride say, 
 Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let 
 him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him 
 take of the water of life freely." Here is the gospel 
 call as unequivocally stated as in any part of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 Thus, in no portion of the Bible are the grand charac- 
 teristics of Christianity more frequently or fully stated. 
 The drapery of the throne does not conceal the Lamb 
 that is in the midst of it ; and the intense splendour of 
 the "many crowns" that are on the brow of "the King 
 of kings," does not dim or conceal that cross on which 
 lie hung in agony as the " Man of sorrows." 
 
 These passages which we have quoted are like stars
 
 22 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 in the Apocalyptic firmatr.ent, of greater or lesser mag- 
 nitude, each shining in the light of the Sun of right- 
 eousness: these are fragments of the rich and Leautiful 
 embroidery on the mystic vail, significant of yet richer 
 excellencies beyond it ; these are snatches, mellowed 
 but not spent in their transit from the skies, of the awful 
 and solemn harmonies that break and roll before the 
 throne of God. But in all Christ is all. The Apoca- 
 lypse is the record of what Christ is and does, since he 
 ascended from the earth, and a cloud received him out 
 of sight. It is the history of his post-resurrection glory. 
 It is an illuminated Commentary on Zech. vi. 13. "He 
 shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a 
 priest upon his throne;" a Priest to offer sacrifice for 
 our guilt a King to rescue us from our enemies, and 
 subdue us to himself; a Priest to expiate our sins a 
 King to extirpate them ; a Priest to take away the guilt 
 of sin a King to break its power; a Priest to pardon 
 a King to purify ; a Priest to give a title to heaven a 
 King to create fitness for it. As a Priest he makes it 
 possible for God to pardon us as a King he makes us 
 willing to receive that pardon ; as a Priest he restores 
 us to the Divine favour as a King he communicates to 
 us the Divine image ; the majesty of the King tempered 
 by the mercy of the Priest, is the light he lives in : and 
 the Book of Revelation is the holy window through 
 which we see these things the contents and the inmates 
 of the upper sanctuary. It is not less necessary that 
 we should see Christ a King than Christ a sufferer. I 
 cannot but add also, that this book contains the history 
 of the doings of Christ in all places ; of his presence also, 
 and evidence of that presence every where. It is a reflec- 
 tion of the panorama of 7000 years, on the concave of 
 the sky, and the revelation of its connexion with Christ. 
 It shows Him to be in the history of nations, the change 
 of dynasties, the eclipse of kingdoms, the wreck of em- 
 pires, restraining overruling directing sanctifying. 
 Josephus becomes unconsciously the chronicler of his 
 presence in the fall of Jerusalem ; and Gibbon, in spite 
 of himself, the faithful witness of his interposition, in 
 the decline of the Roman empire. Wheresoever the
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYPSE. 23 
 
 ploughshare of Vespasian tore, or the cimeter of the 
 Moslem mowed, or the foot of the Goth trod down, 
 wheresoever the persecutor drove the Christian, from 
 Pella to the Cottian Alps, wheresoever the wild beasts 
 devoured, or the flame consumed, wheresoever the 
 crescent waxed, or the cross waned, where Trent thun- 
 dered its anathemas, and Luther echoed his protests, 
 in the Sicilian vespers at the massacre of Bartholomew 
 on the pavements of Smithfield in the French Revo- 
 lution on the field of Waterloo in all facts in all oc- 
 currences Christ was, and is ; and this sublime book is 
 the evidence that it is so. 
 
 "Unto Him that loved us" is the ascription written 
 in my text. Who can this be, who to John was so 
 plainly familiar, and yet so great and so glorious, that 
 he omits even his name, as if no one could mistake him, 
 as if every reader must instantly apprehend him ? No 
 angel in heaven, nor ancient patriarch, no apostle nor 
 king, can this be. None of these had love to dare, nor 
 strength to do what is here ascribed to " Him." He 
 must have been man, for he had blood to shed ; he must 
 have been a man of sorrows, for he shed that blood. 
 This Christ was, man in all that the word compre- 
 hends, in its infirmities, and tears, and trials, and sor- 
 rows. Sin he had not ; for it is no part of humanity, 
 it is its disease its corruption, and from this he was 
 infinitely distant. He was man, but holy man ; a suf- 
 fering, but from first to last a sinless man ; but he must 
 also have been God. The fact that he laid down his life 
 voluntarily, implies this. No creature has his life at his 
 own disposal : a creature giving up his life unbidden, 
 would be a suicide. Besides, were Christ not God, what 
 he has done would go far to make every creature wor- 
 ship him as God ; for He that redeems, and pardons, and 
 saves me, and at such an expenditure as that of Calvary, 
 must gather to himself my adoration, my trust, my- love. 
 I cannot but worship Him who saves me from eternal 
 perdition, and lifts me to eternal joy. If Christ be not 
 God, the foresight of this tendency would have filled the 
 Apostolic Epistles with warnings against the idolatry 
 which would have inevitably and justly become all but
 
 24 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the universal worship of Christians. But He is God as 
 truly as man ; worship and confidence are his due, just 
 as much as they are our sacred duty. 
 
 " He loved us," and this antecedently to our loving 
 Him : his love to us originated our love to him, as the 
 sound creates its echo. How great, how sovereign that 
 love which lighted upon us, in whom there was nothing 
 to attract, deserve, or retain it ; but, on the contrary, 
 much to provoke, weary, and repel it. He loved us, in 
 spite of what we were, not because of what we were ; 
 not on account of excellencies in us, but to create excel- 
 lencies that were not in us. Man loves, because he sees 
 something in the loved to attract his affections, God 
 loves, in order to create in the loved something to retain 
 his love. It is this that makes our conscious debt to 
 grace exceed all computation, and defy all repayment. 
 We may conceive the intensity of this love by number- 
 ing and estimating, if we can, the difficulties through 
 which it had to wade. He had to save sinners, not in 
 spite of the law, but according to the law, to show God's 
 law righteous while it condemns, and righteous still 
 while it acquits ; God true while He stands by his tes- 
 timony, "the soul that sins shall die;" and no less true 
 while He makes real his declaration, " he that believeth 
 in the Son of God hath everlasting life;" God just 
 while He justifies the ungodly, and holy while He takes 
 sinners to his bosom. These are some of the seeming 
 impossibilities that love had to do the innumerable con- 
 trarieties it had to reconcile the infinite obstructions 
 through which it had to work its way, to reach us. The 
 height from which it came is the throne of Deity ; the 
 depth to which it descends is the ruin from which it 
 plucks us ; its breadth is the earth which it circles as 
 with a zone and its length from first to last is Eternity. 
 " He washed us from our sins in his own blood." This 
 is the Scriptural phrase employed to denote his atoning 
 expiatory sufferings. Nothing else but the life of the 
 Son of God expended on the cross could insure the for- 
 giveness of the least and fewest of these sins of ours. 
 No other element had virtue. No voice from height or 
 depth in the universe could say, with authority, to the
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYPSE. 25 
 
 least transgressor, " thy sins be forgiven thee." No fast- 
 ing, mortification, or penance, or absolution of the priest, 
 or indulgence of Pope or jubilee, ever approached the 
 inner seat of the soul's disquiet ; none of these rise high 
 enough to reach God, or descend low enough to reach 
 us. The accusations of conscience in the midst of all 
 these "refuges of lies" outnumber its excuses, and the 
 law of God, in spite of these and thousands more, will 
 fulminate and make felt its lightnings. Nor does sin 
 ever exhaust its penalties, and thus render forgiveness 
 unnecessary, and the shedding of that blood uncalled for. 
 A convict banished for a definite period, exhausts his 
 sentence, and thus becomes free ; but were that convict 
 to commit, in the course of his exile, a new crime, a new 
 sentence would fasten on him, and add to the years of 
 his banishment ; we sin while we suffer, we add to our 
 punishment by adding to our guilt, and thus by the very 
 nature and necessity of the case, sin is an eternal evil 
 never working out its cure, but ever its perpetuity ; it 
 is a self-generating evil eternity does not exhaust it - 
 it adds to it. An atonement was essential to our re- 
 storation ; without shedding of blood, there could be no 
 remission of sins and what an atonement ! it has 
 touched the deep spot of anger in the bosom of God, 
 and descending along its dark line to its utmost havoc 
 and curse, it has rescued, reconciled, restored us. Christ 
 pardons us while we sin, and draws us off while he par- 
 dons alike from the love and practice of sin. 
 
 It was his own blood that made this atonement, and it 
 alone. No other element mingled with it, nothing could 
 heighten its value it needed nothing. He trod the 
 wine-press alone. He suffered alone, and his suffering 
 was sufficient. He obeyed alone, and his obedience was 
 all that was required. His is all the merit of the pro- 
 cess, and therefore all the glory of the result. He paid 
 all we owed to God, and purchased more than God owed 
 to us. He began it in the manger, and finished it upon 
 the cross. He humbled himself to merit, and he is ex- 
 alted to bestow salvation. What depth of dye must 
 there be in sin ! what intensity of evil in that terrible 
 monosyllable ! what concentrated poison, seeing no less
 
 26 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 illustrious a victim, no less costly a price was required 
 for its expiation, and no less precious a thing than the 
 blood of Christ could wash it away. Tremble at sin. 
 Plague, pestilence, and famine are nothing to sin. These 
 scathe the body, it blasts the soul. These have but a 
 temporary effect, while sin creates an eternal woe. But 
 through Christ I am washed from my sins by that pre- 
 cious blood, alike from their curse, their condemnation, 
 and all their penal consequences. The law remains in 
 all its force, its sacredness, and its stability, and yet it 
 has no hold of me. All my guilt is put away, all my 
 demerits are cancelled, and from no spot in the wide 
 universe can a sentence of condemnation come upon me, 
 or the thunder of a violated law smite me. But I see in 
 the atonement of Jesus not merely a channel for the ef- 
 flux of the love and forgiving mercy of God, but a stand- 
 ing proof of that love, its measure, its exponent, and 
 representative. It not only shows me that God can for- 
 give me consistently with all his attributes, but also that 
 He delights to do so. Hence what this sacrifice expresses, 
 is as precious as what it does. It is evidence to me that 
 my salvation is not a mere provision for a bare escape 
 from punishment, but the proof of the existence of a 
 love in God my Father that longs to embrace me. It 
 meets precisely what I need it supplies what I long 
 and thirst to know. I require to know, in order to have 
 peace, not only that God shall not punish me, but that 
 he will love me not only freedom from the curse, but 
 friendship with God. I cannot be happy with mere 
 safety. I require reconciliation. I cannot consent to 
 enter heaven, and spend its cycles as a pardoned con- 
 vict, tolerated, spared, but no more I long, I pant to be 
 there, an adopted son. I feel that God must not only 
 let me go, but take me back, ere I can be happy. I 
 must be placed, not merely beyond the penalties of the 
 law, but beneath the love of God. I require to be raised 
 higher than pardon, justification, and sanctification ; I 
 must not only pass the tribunal of the legislator; lean- 
 not rest till I repose in the bosom, or rest amid the sun- 
 shine of the reconciled countenance of my Father. I 
 see all this embodied, expressed, and secured in the
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYPSE. 27 
 
 atonement of Jesus. It is not only the way to heaven, 
 but the measure and the pledge of the welcome that 
 awaits me there. It is thus I hear richer music in the 
 words "It is finished" than I ever heard before. Now 
 can I say and sing with an emphasis I never felt before, 
 "Unto Him that loved me, and washed me from my 
 sins in his own blood ; to Him be glory and dominion 
 for ever and ever." 
 
 But safety from the curse and reinstatement in the 
 love of God does not exhaust the destiny that awaits 
 the children of God. He, that loved us, and washed 
 us from our sins in his own blood, makes us kings and 
 priests unto God. It is not enough to save us to love 
 us. He will also dignify us. The safety of the pardon- 
 ed the joy of the restored the adoption of sons, are 
 heightened by the superadded dignity of kings, and the 
 sacredness of priests. The crown of beauty and of em- 
 pire we lost in Adam, is restored in Christ. "Ye are a 
 chosen generation, a royal priesthood." Paradise re- 
 gained, includes man's sovereignty restored. How pre- 
 cious that sacrifice, which not only saves from destruc- 
 tion, and restores to love, but lifts also to a dignity be- 
 side which all earthly royalty is but a gleam on the 
 troubled waters of earth. We are kings, hid it may be, 
 but true and real. 
 
 We are also made priests. "Ye are a royal priest- 
 hood." If priests, we must have sacrifices : what are 
 these ? " To do good, and to communicate, forget not ; 
 with such sacrifices God is well pleased." "I beseech 
 you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies 
 a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is 
 your reasonable service." Our altar is no perishable 
 one ; " we have an altar of which they have no right to 
 eat, which serve the tabernacle." " By HIM let us offer 
 the sacrifice of praise to God continually." Thus Christ 
 is the eternal altar that sanctifies all that is laid on it, 
 the widow's mite, the royal dowry, and the angel's 
 anthem. Man shall once more be replaced in his pris- 
 tine position, as the priest of the world, the eye of the 
 earth, to see above it that innumerable host in the 
 overshadowing sky, the sentinels and outposts of which
 
 28 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 only we now catch a glimpse of, and God throned in 
 the midst of them ; the ear of earth to hear the voice 
 of God, the mind of the earth to know God, the heart 
 of the earth to love Him ; and all this that he may be 
 the priest of the earth to devote, in ceaseless offering, all 
 its treasures to Him whose will called them into being, 
 and like the priests of Levi, to have no portion, save 
 God, the portion that includes all besides. To Him 
 who thus loved us, we give all the "glory." 
 
 Ours is the enjoyment of the blessing. His is the 
 glory ; this is the light of heaven, this the language of 
 the redeemed, the key note of their songs, the expres- 
 sion of their inmost hearts. Not one voice in that in- 
 numerable multitude will be lifted up in praise of itself ; 
 were there such a voice, it would be intolerable discord. 
 All the inhabitants of heaven feel that they can never 
 overpraise " Him who loved them and washed them 
 from their sins in his own blood." There are no 
 Socinians in heaven, for all there adore and worship the 
 Lamb. Nor are there any Romanists there, for the 
 undivided glory is given to Him Avho sits upon the 
 throne ; all tribes, and nations, and people, and tongues 
 are there, but in virtue of the sacrifice of Jesus, circum- 
 stantially different as tongue and tribe can make them ; 
 essentially one, as the blood of Christ alone can consti- 
 tute them. 
 
 Dwellers on the Mississippi and Missouri, and in the 
 back woods of Canada, and the prairies of the west, are 
 there. Millions from the Andes, and the isles of the 
 Pacific, from the mountains of Thibet, and the cities of 
 China, from every jungle of India, and from every 
 pagoda of Hindostan, the untutored Arab, and the un- 
 cultivated Druse, and the " tribes of the weary foot," 
 the children of Salem are there, and Abraham, and Job, 
 and Isaiah, and John and Peter, and Augustine, and 
 Wickliffe, and Luther, are there also, and many we in 
 our uncharitableness, or bigotry, or exclusiveness, or 
 ignorance, excluded from heaven, will be there also ; and 
 our sires, and sons, and babes, and parents will be there, 
 completed circles never again to be broken, and their 
 united voices will give utterance to their deep and en-
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYPSE. 29 
 
 dui'ing gratitude, "Unto Him that loved us, and washed 
 us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
 kings and priests unto God, even the Father, to Him be 
 glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen." 
 
 Dear brethren, do not say the Book of Revelation is 
 not the gospel. 
 
 John and those associated with him show their sense 
 of the obligations and mercies of which they are the 
 happy recipients, by ascribing unto the Fountain of them 
 all "the glory and the dominion for ever." We thus 
 show our gratitude on earth by ascribing audibly to our 
 Eternal Benefactor the glory of all. We cannot be 
 silent even in this world, as the children of such and so 
 countless benefits. We will not consent to wrap our 
 blessings in a napkin, or bury them in oblivion. We are 
 not so unaffected by them that we can easily forget them, 
 nor so ashamed to acknowledge them that we shall refuse 
 audibly to proclaim them. While we never forget on 
 earth the sins by which we have dishonoured God ; we 
 can never forget the rich grace in the exercise of which 
 He has most graciously forgiven them. The recollec- 
 tion of the former will keep us truly humble, and the re- 
 collection of the latter will preserve us eminently thank- 
 ful. It is related that when the Greeks heard that the 
 Macedonian invader was overthrown, a whole nation 
 raised to the skies so loud a shout, trwrrjo, ffvrrjp, Saviour ! 
 saviour ! that birds upon the wing dropped down. Fa- 
 ble should become fact in our case. They felt such, 
 overpowering gratitude at a temporal deliverance : what 
 gratitude ought we to feel, what songs ought we to raise 
 in order to express our obligations to Him that " loved 
 us and washed us from our sins in his own blood ! " 
 
 Of this we may be assured, that unrecognised bless- 
 ings are always unprofitable ones. What is nothing in 
 our eyes exercises no sanctifying influence on our hearts : 
 slighted mercies provoke the sharpest judgments. God 
 will no more endure his kindness to be slighted than his 
 holiness to be trodden under foot, and hence he will not 
 be a long or a quiet possessor of blessings, if it be pos- 
 sible to be such a possessor who does not acknowledge 
 them. But it never can be the characteristic of a Chris-
 
 30 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 tian to be loud in asking, and dumb in acknowledging ; 
 to recognise God when we are in want, and to forget 
 God when we are full to be Christians when prayer is 
 our duty and privilege, and Atheists when praise be- 
 comes us. The gospel unveiled in the Apocalypse 
 teaches us far different things. Saints on earth and saints 
 in glory audibly express the gratitude they deeply feel, 
 iu ceaseless songs, " Unto Him that loved us and washed 
 us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
 kings and priests unto God and his Father, to Him be 
 glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen." John 
 had so impressive a recollection of mercies, that he re- 
 verses the usual order, and begins, as embodied in the 
 text, with praise and ends with prayer, as in chap, xxii, 
 20, "Even so come, Lord Jesus." 
 
 Brethren, it is one thing to learn that the gospel is 
 contained in the Apocalypse ; it is quite another to feel 
 its transforming power in the depths and recesses of our 
 own souls : we may pass to the very outermost darkness 
 of hell, versed in all the visions of the seer of Patmos, 
 we may perish from the midst of Apocalyptic studies. 
 The only thing that can save us, is the application of 
 atoning blood to our hearts and consciences ; and the only 
 evidence of its realization is found in the peace, and 
 purity, and joy, and hope, which grow and bloom in that 
 heart which the blood of the Lamb has sprinkled, and 
 the Spirit of the Lamb has taken possession of. I can- 
 not for one moment conceal from you, that there is no 
 room for you to entertain questions in prophecy till you 
 have tirst opened your heart to the personal reception of 
 Him who is the only Saviour. Yet some repudiate the 
 name and gospel of Christ, and live as if Calvary and 
 Gethsemane, and judgment and eternity, were dreams 
 and phantoms, and not the most solemn realities that 
 history records, or the universe unbosoms. "There 
 is none other name given among men whereby we can 
 be saved." "No man cometh to the Father but by Me." 
 " Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." Some 
 neglect the gospel : they admit it is true in words ; they 
 deny it in their life and practice. This is emphatically 
 criminal." It is worse than rejecting it is insult added
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE APOCALYPSE. 31 
 
 to infidelity : it virtually says, "that which engaged the 
 wisdom and expressed the mercy of God that which 
 necessitated the atonement and all its awful accompani- 
 ments, is not worth our attention." " How shall we 
 escape if we neglect so great a salvation ! " 
 
 Some abuse the gospel. Because grace abounds they 
 think sin may abound also : this is grievous perversion. 
 Some obscure the gospel ; they mingle with the truth 
 the traditions of men : this is very sinful, and very mis- 
 chievous. It is brightest in its own original lustre, it 
 needs no ornament from without. But others embrace, 
 admire, and love it, celebrate the love they respond to, 
 and spread, according to their means, among others, the 
 blessings they have tasted themselves. Every Christian 
 becomes a missionary. It is, indeed, utterly impossible 
 that any can taste the blessings of the gospel of Christ, 
 and fail to make efforts corresponding to his means, to 
 circulate the tidings which have sounded so musical to 
 his ear. He feels that he has the unction of the saint 
 only that he may enter on the duties of the servant. 
 The moment he ceases to be a steward for others, that 
 moment he ceases to act like a son of God. Grace, like 
 the human heart, ceases to live the instant it ceases to 
 circulate. It is, in its essence, diffusive, it has no 
 sympathy with selfish monopoly, it glories in self-sacri- 
 fice, it grows by giving, like the widow's cruse of oil 
 and barrel of meal, it increases ever as it is expended ; 
 till none become so rich in grace as they who have 
 spread around them, with the most unsparing liberality, 
 its glorious treasures. The labours of the living, and of 
 those who have preceded us to immortality and glory, 
 will not be lost : the seed they sowed, and watered with 
 their tears, cannot die. Tokens of these ultimate tri- 
 umphs are already looming into view. In many a land 
 the altars of Paganism are crumbling to ruins, and the 
 shrines of Popery parting with their remaining meretri- 
 cious splendours. The cloisters of the Priest, and the 
 alhambra of the Moslem, will soon hear the voice of the 
 Son of God. Christianity is on her colossal march. 
 Her sentinels are awakened by the first rays of the ap- 
 proaching sun. The song that has been sung by the
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 few by the rivers of Babylon will, ere long, be sung by 
 a mighty multitude whom no man can number. " Unto 
 Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his 
 own blood, and hath made us priests and kings unto 
 God and his Father, unto Him be glory and dominion, 
 for ever and ever. Amen." 
 
 Brethren, do not say the Apocalypse is not the gos- 
 pel. The name of Christ lies under every symbol, and 
 the blood of the everlasting covenant gives its colouring 
 to every truth. It may happen that where the gospel, 
 as uttered from the lips of the Man of sorrows in the 
 streets of Jerusalem, has not been productive of its just 
 effect, the same gospel sounding forth from the Lord of 
 glory, wearing many crowns, and seated on the throne 
 of the universe, may create deep, saving, and indelible 
 impressions. We thus pray. We patiently wait.
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE SEVEN SEALS. 
 
 " After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven : 
 
 and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet 
 
 talking with me ; which said, Come up hither, and I will show 
 
 thee things which must be hereafter. 
 "And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was 
 
 set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. 
 " And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine 
 
 stone : and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in 
 
 sight like unto an emerald. 
 " And round about the throne were four and twenty seats : and 
 
 upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in 
 
 white raiment ; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. 
 " And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and 
 
 voices : and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the 
 
 throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. 
 " And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal : 
 
 and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were 
 
 four beasts full of eyes before and behind. 
 " And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a 
 
 calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth 
 
 beast was like a flying eagle. 
 " And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him ; and 
 
 they were full of eyes within : and they rest not day and night, 
 
 saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and 
 
 is, and is to come. 
 " And when those beasts 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 that sat on the 
 
 throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, 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." REV. iv. 
 
 JOHN sees "a door" in the walls of heaven, and 
 through that door he beholds, and in this chapter de- 
 scribes, its interior glory. He witnesses there in that 
 vast panorama the dawning scenes of centuries to come,
 
 84 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 each century sweeping past in solemn procession. First, 
 however, he unveils the heavenly state just as he sees 
 it. Foremost in the scene he beholds the Son of God 
 arrayed and radiant with his evangelical glory ; the sar- 
 dine or colour of flesh indicating his humanity as the 
 visible shrine of Deity, and the rainbow, that thing 
 woven out of sunbeams and raindrops smiles and tears, 
 he recognises as the emblem of a covenant in all things 
 ordered and sure ; the predominating green, the colour 
 that prevails in creation, because softest and most suit- 
 able to the eye, indicates the softening influence of the 
 humanity of Jesus on the rays of the otherwise inap- 
 proachable glory that shone through it. This in fact is 
 the character of heaven. The crown of Jesus is visible 
 in the subduing light of his cross his very throne of 
 glory lies in the light of Calvary, and Paradise regained 
 wears still in heaven the aspect of Gethsemane. Four 
 living creatures, (wa,) improperly translated " beasts," 
 (which last is the proper rendering of 0jjpia, a word that 
 occurs in subsequent parts of this book.) and four and 
 twenty elders are revealed to John in the celestial scene. 
 The four living creatures, it is probable, refer to the 
 Jewish Church, and are meant to personate it, as seems 
 to be indicated by their respective Jewish characteristics. 
 The twelve tribes were arranged in their marching into 
 four divisions, and each division had its appropriate 
 symbol. Judah and his two tribes had the symbol of a 
 lion ; Reuben and his two, that of a man ; Ephraim and 
 his two, that of a bull ; Dan and his two, that of an 
 eagle. The four and twenty elders very probably re- 
 present the Gentile Church, being in no respect signal- 
 ized by Levitical symbols. At all events the two parties, 
 the living creatures and the elders are of the Redeemed 
 Church, and not angelic beings, as is obvious from their 
 anthem, chap. v. 8, 9 "And when he had taken the 
 book the four living creatures and four and twenty elders 
 fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them 
 harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the 
 prayers of saints," or holy ones, i. e. of themselves ; "and 
 they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take 
 the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 35 
 
 slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of 
 every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ; and 
 hast made us unto our God kings and priests : and we 
 shall reign on the earth." These worshipping ones, 
 evidently a company of redeemed gathered from the 
 church below, are also represented as casting their 
 crowns before the throne. This is evidence, by an ex- 
 pressive action, of their conscious obligation to Him that 
 loved them. They see on each crown the image of the 
 Lamb and the superscription of his name, and each gem 
 seems to them radiant with his lustre, and this fact gives 
 emphasis to every feeling and eloquence to every song. 
 The sins of the lost will never be over-punished, and 
 the mercies of the saved will never be over-acknow- 
 ledged. The former will never cease to blame them- 
 selves. The latter will never cease to praise the Lord. 
 The "seven Spirits" referred to in verse 5, and likened 
 to seven lamps of fire, are apocalyptic representations of 
 the Holy Spirit of God. The number seven is em- 
 ployed in Scripture as the numerical representative of 
 perfection. Thus, the seven churches represent the one 
 universal visible church ; and in the use of this number 
 there seems to be a usage borne out by corresponding 
 analogies in the material world. All know that seven 
 colours are the component elements of pure light ; and 
 seven notes is the range of the musical scale ; and thus 
 the sacred symbol may be laid in the nature of things.* 
 It may here too be proper to answer the question, 
 why symbols are employed, when abstract and naked 
 ideas might have been set forth. Symbols are the most 
 permanent exponents of thought, as well as universally 
 intelligible, because the great facts and leading pheno- 
 mena of creation are the same in all countries and in all 
 ages, and convey at the same time most vividly, as well 
 as most intelligibly, universally, and permanently, the 
 truths of which they are the vehicles ; but, in fact, there 
 
 * The seven Spirits are quoted by Romanists in defence of angel 
 worship. But Augustine, in his exposition of Psalm cl., and 
 Gregory Nazianzen, in his forty-first Oration, and Ambrose, on 
 Luke, Book IX., all apply the passage to the Holy Ghost or 
 Septifonn Spirit. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 was a necessity, as far as we can see, for the use of sym- 
 bols in a Divine book that describes the future. If ut- 
 terly unintelligible, they would have been useless either 
 as prefigu rations of truth or evidences by comparison of 
 its fulfilment, and if too obvious, they would have in- 
 terfered with the responsibility of man and the freedom 
 of the movements of the world. They are perfect, just 
 as the Holy Spirit has given them. 
 
 The inspired seer then gives his vision of the book 
 with seven seals, in chap. v. 1 7. "And I saw in the 
 right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written 
 within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. 
 AndJ saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 
 Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals 
 thereof ? And no man in heaven nor in earth, neither 
 under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to 
 look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was 
 found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to 
 look thereon. And one of the elders saith unto rne, 
 Weep not : behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the 
 Hoot of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to 
 loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in 
 the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, 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 into all the earth. And he came 
 and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat 
 upon the throne." 
 
 This chapter opens with an account of the mysterious 
 book, which contained things to come, that is, things 
 subsequent to the date of the apocalyptic vision. The ex- 
 planation of its being written "within" and "without" is 
 ascertained by a reference to the structure of the ancient 
 book or volume. It was a skin of parchment, with a 
 roller at each end. The reader having read the writing 
 on the skin in the part between the two rollers, unwound 
 a portion from the left-hand roller, and after reading it, 
 wound it on the right, and when the whole of one side 
 had thus been perused in successive portions, he turned 
 toward himself the opposite ends of the rollers, and wound 
 and unwound as before, till all the manuscript on the
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 37 
 
 other side had been likewise read. The book seen by 
 the seer and thus constructed, had seven seals attached 
 to it seals, that serve to indicate that they were secret, 
 and also seals, to indicate that they were to be broken or 
 opened. Each seal was the compendium of a distinct 
 prophecy of events and circumstances to evolve. Various 
 theories have been given by way of explanation ; the 
 most celebrated are those of Cunninghame of Lainshaw, 
 and Elliott. The first six seals contain the history of 
 the temporal glory and decline of Rome Pagan, the most 
 illustrious empire of the ancient earth. This is my 
 strong, and I think demonstrable conviction. The first 
 six trumpets, which are comprehended in the seventh 
 seal, contain the desolation of Rome Christian by the 
 Goths, the Saracens, and the Turks. The first six vials, 
 which are comprehended in the seventh trumpet, em- 
 body the events that occurred subsequent to the break- 
 ing forth of the great European revolution in 1793. 
 Thus the twenty-one apocalyptic symbols, the seven 
 seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials, represent 
 in succession the progress of the church along the ob- 
 structions of time, her vicissitudes of experience, her 
 trials, her cruel mockings, her perils, and her final tri- 
 umph and permanent prosperity, contemporaneously 
 with overwhelming judgments on the nations, and on 
 the apostacy. John says, verse 4, " I wept much, be- 
 cause no man was found worthy to open and to read 
 the book." The sacred seer thus showed an earnest and 
 anxious desire to understand unfulfilled prophecy, and 
 thereby to learn things that were to come. Such desire 
 was net sinful, nay, within the proper limits it was as 
 dutiful as it was blessed. If no symbol had been ex- 
 hibited significant of events to come, he would have had 
 no right to inquire, " for secret things belong unto the 
 Lord." But as a symbol was shown him, it was the in- 
 stinct of nature and the evidence of grace to seek rever- 
 ently and humbly after its significance, for "things re- 
 vealed belong to us and to our children;" but we are 
 not left to conjecture on the nature of this curiosity, for 
 one of the elders showed it was lawful when he said unto 
 him, " Weep not, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the
 
 38 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to 
 loose the seven seals thereof;" and on John looking up 
 he saw "in the midst of the throne a Lamb as it had 
 been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which 
 are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. 
 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of 
 him that sat upon the throne." Thus, Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, the Saviour of sinners, in the exercise of his pro- 
 phetic office, represented by seven eyes, the great sym- 
 bol of omniscience, and by the seven horns, the symbol 
 of omnipotent power, and in virtue of his perfect atone- 
 ment and its perpetual efficacy as " the Lamb slain," 
 broke the seals, and opened the book, and unveiled for 
 us its wonderful contents. He is now as ever the Lion 
 of the tribe of Judah, that is, strength and royalty, power 
 and j urisdiction combined. He is now also as ever the root 
 of all being, the fountain of all life. He is seated on the 
 throne ; but even the lustre of that throne cannot conceal 
 the lowliness and loveliness of the most interesting specta- 
 cle in glory, the Lamb slain. The word ka^ay^ivoi^ here 
 rendered "as it had been slain," means literally killed in 
 sacrifice, and as if just newly so killed, and conveys be- 
 yond the power of English to express the continual 
 freshness and applicability of the atoning and expiatory 
 efficacy of the blood of Christ, and teaches us the precious 
 truth, that there is the same virtue in the atonement this 
 very moment as there was when that atonement was first 
 made. Years do not waste its virtue, and the successive 
 millions that have drawn from it do not exhaust its ful- 
 ness. When the Lamb had thus taken the book, and 
 stood ready to open it, the four living creatures and the 
 four and twenty elders, being designed to represent the 
 first-fruits and precursors of the redeemed in glory, sung 
 a new song with harps, and golden vials full of incense, 
 which are the prayers of, literally, the holy ones, that is, 
 themselves ; and they sang a new song, (v. 9,) saying, 
 " Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the 
 seals thereof, for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us 
 to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue 
 and people and nation." And the angels also took up 
 the flying strains and, according to their experience and
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 39 
 
 nature, sang, ten thousand times ten thousand, and thou- 
 sands of thousands being their number, " "Worthy is the 
 Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and 
 wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and bless- 
 ing ; and every creature in heaven, and on the earth, 
 and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, added, 
 Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him 
 that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the Lamb for 
 ever and ever." There was displayed on this august oc- 
 casion, on Christ's part, a new manifestation of his cha- 
 racter, a new evolution of his glory ; and they that 
 beheld it, in order to express the all but inexpressible 
 feeling stirred within them by that new and glorious 
 apocalypse, sung a new song its theme, atoning blood 
 its key-note, redeeming love its harmony, the sus- 
 tained and blended voices of adoring spirits and the 
 choir that sang it, the redeemed tenantry of heaven and 
 earth, the angels of the sky, and the grateful inmates of 
 the ocean and the air. Thus it is now, and thus it will 
 be for ever. The songs of psalmists praise him the 
 harps of prophets praise him the records of evangelists 
 and the eloquence of apostles praise him the seals, the 
 trumpets, and the vials praise him the glorious com- 
 pany of the apostles praise him the goodly fellowship 
 of the prophets praise him the noble army of martyrs 
 praise him the past, the present, and the future praise 
 him all things bear the impress of his love exhibit 
 the evidence and the influence of his wisdom and the 
 inspiration of his power, and become the organs of the 
 ceaseless manifestation of his glory. 
 
 Chap. vi. begins with the opening of the first seal, 
 " And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, 
 and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the 
 lour living creatures, saying, Come and see. And I saw, 
 and behold a white horse ; and he that sat on him had a 
 bow ; and a crown was given unto him, and he went 
 forth conquering and to conquer." The first four seals 
 have one great characteristic in common, viz. the symbol 
 of a horse. It is the basis of each. This must indicate 
 something which they share in common. Is there any 
 clue to the solution of this symbol suggested by its his-
 
 40 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 torical, or national, or local import ? There is. Almost 
 every nation has some emblem as its national exponent 
 and characteristic. Thus the thistle is the symbol 'of 
 Scotland ; the rose, of England ; and the shamrock, of 
 Ireland. These are the national hieroglyphs. Were any 
 one to write an apocalyptic history of Ireland, for instance, 
 during the last twelvemonths, he would probably write, 
 that the shamrock lost much of its verdure, and ultimate- 
 ly withered and died in the autumn of 1846, but that it 
 recovered all its pristine beauty in the course of 1847 ; 
 and no one acquainted with the literal historical facts 
 would be likely to mistake the meaning of such an allu- 
 sion. Now the horse was strictly a national emblem of 
 Rome, as the thistle is of Scotland, the rose of England, or 
 the lily of France, or the shamrock of Ireland. Medals 
 are still in existence with alto-relievo figures of the horse, 
 and the word ROMA inscribed below. The Romans also 
 called themselves Gens Mavortia, that is, the people of 
 Mars, and the horse, in their mythology, was sacred to 
 * Mars. Thus, therefore, there can be little doubt, that 
 the four first seals refer to and represent the Roman em- 
 pire in its pagan state. The colours of the horses point 
 out its successive stages of prosperity, suffering, conquest, 
 or decay the riders on the horses represent the agents 
 employed to bring about its various phases or conditions 
 and the crown, the bow, and the balance represent the 
 class, or family, or nation, to which these agents respec- 
 tively belonged. By adhering to these very natural ex- 
 planations, we shall be able to open up much that would 
 be otherwise enigmatical, if not impenetrable, and to 
 show consistency where all would be confusion. 
 
 The colour of the first horse viz. white indicates a 
 state of prosperity, victory, and expansion, as the cha- 
 racteristic of the Roman empire during the period com- 
 prehended in this seal. White is the common symbol 
 of prosperity ; and in triumphal processions the Roman 
 horses were covered with white. The meaning of this 
 symbol is therefore plain, and its application obvious. 
 Now, was there any period beginning at the date of this 
 vision, signalized by such marked prosperity as is here 
 
 * Fuit equus Marti sacer proptcr usum belli, ct quotannis ci 
 Ronue immolabatur. Facciolati.
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 41 
 
 symbolically set forth ? There was. During the reigns 
 of Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines, a 
 period commencing A. D. 97, and closing A. D. 180, the 
 Roman empire experienced a condition of almost un- 
 clouded national prosperity : Trajan's victories were so 
 numerous and splendid that he was called the Roman 
 Alexander ; and Trajan's column stands to this day, a 
 retrospective monument of the splendour of his reign. 
 Gibbon, in this, as in most other instances, unconsciously 
 and undesignedly furnishes in his history evidence of the 
 truth of prophecy. " The empire," he says, " was go- 
 verned by wisdom and virtue, unstained by civil blood, 
 undisturbed by revolution. The period when the hu- 
 man race was most happy extended from the death of 
 Domitian to the accession of Commodus." The crown 
 upon the rider's head indicates that imperial agency was 
 the source of this state of happiness, and that we are 
 right in fixing the era indicated by this seal in the first 
 and second centuries, is made still more clear by refer- 
 ring to the original Greek word here translated croton, 
 s, (stephanos,) wreath, or laurel crown. The 
 (diadema) was not worn till centuries after- 
 wards, and the allusion therefore to the laurel crown, 
 and not to the diadem, is corroborative evidence of the 
 correctness of the chronology, or periodal history, illus- 
 trative of this seal. In the rider's hand was a bow, a 
 symbol which long perplexed apocalyptic commentators ; 
 Mr. Elliott alone seems to have reached the true solu- 
 tion of it, and on the same pervading principle on which 
 he has so consistently prosecuted his researches, viz. that 
 the symbols were always selected with a reference to the 
 age, the country, or the manners and customs of the 
 people. Crete was the chief ancient place that was cele- 
 brated for the manufacture of bows, so much so, that 
 Cretan bows were as popular in Rome as Sheffield cut- 
 lery or Staffordshire earthenwares are throughout Eu- 
 rope. One proof of the meaning of the bow employed 
 as a symbol is found in a Greek epigram on a female, 
 with an explanation which assigns her a magpie to de- 
 note her loquacity, a cup her drunkenness, and a bow to 
 show that she was a Cretan by birth. As if to exhibit
 
 42 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the perfect minuteness of the apocalyptic symbols, and 
 still more to confirm the justice of our reference of this 
 seal to the period we have fixed, we are informed in 
 history, that on Nerva's accession there was introduced 
 a new dynasty to the imperial throne. * Nerva was the 
 first emperor of Cretan family and origin, and his im- 
 mediate successors were Cretan also. 
 
 "And when he had opened the second seal, I heard 
 the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out 
 another horse that was red, and power was given to him 
 that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that 
 they should kill one another ; and there was given unto 
 him a great sword," (ver.-3, 4.) In this seal, also, the 
 Roman empire (the horse) is the subject of description. 
 Red is the popular and all but universal symbol of blood- 
 shed. The sword, when presented to any one within a 
 circuit of a hundred miles of Rome, at the era referred to 
 in this seal, was equivalent to his appointment or investi- 
 ture to be Pretorian Prefect. This, therefore, would indi- 
 cate that the agency employed under this seal was Preto- 
 rian. " Killing one another " is the language of civil war. 
 The peace taken from the earth has in the original the de- 
 finite article, and this shows that the commission issued to 
 the rider was to take away the peace that was created or 
 prevailed during the first seal. Is there anything recorded 
 in history which exhausts and illustrates these symbols ? 
 We appeal to Gibbon. He shows that the bright and hap- 
 py era which we have just referred to was succeeded by 
 intestine and incessant civil wars. Dion Cassius calls it 
 "a transition from a golden to an iron age." The Pretorian 
 Guards, under their chief, murdered nine Roman empe- 
 rors in succession ; and during a period of sixty years, 
 that is, from the close of the first seal, A. D. 1 80, to the 
 close of the second seal, A. D. 240, they exercised extermi- 
 nating cruelties, and created a Roman reign of terror. 
 Gibbon writes " Their licentious fury was the first symp- 
 tom and cause of the decline of the Roman empire." 
 
 " And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the 
 third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a 
 black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of ba- 
 * Quid cnim Ncrva Cretensi prudentior? Aurelius Viet.
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 43 
 
 lances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of 
 the four beasts, saying, A measure of wheat for a penny, 
 and three measures of barley for a penny, and see thou 
 hurt not the oil and the wine," (ver. 5, 6.) The Roman 
 empire is again the subject of this scenic or chorographic 
 description. "Black" is the all but universal emblem 
 of mourning and distress. The language used implies a 
 state of want, famine, and oppression. The caution, 
 " hurt not the oil and wine," ought to be translated, 
 " hurt not with regard to the oil and the wine," that is, 
 be just in selling these commodities to the poor. Give 
 them proper measure, the worth of their money ; a cau- 
 tion that would naturally be urged during a state of na- 
 tional penury. The balance shows that the proconsuls, 
 or provincial governors, were the agency employed on 
 this occasion to bring about this state of destitution, " a 
 balance" being a proconsular ensign, as is evident from 
 the fact, that proconsular coins are still extant, having 
 struck upon them a balance and an ear of corn. At the 
 close of the events described in the preceding seal, Ca- 
 racalla enforced, and the provincial governors carried 
 into effect, the most grinding taxation, and plunged the 
 empire in wide-spread ruin. Formerly only one of the 
 three commodities, wheat, oil, and wine, was exacted for 
 the emperor and court. Now, all three were exacted 
 the national finance was exhausted commerce was stag- 
 nant, and agricultural depression descended to its lowest 
 point ; and Gibbon refers to the edict of Caracalla as 
 of peculiar importance in its effect on the decay and ex- 
 haustion of the empire. 
 
 " And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard 
 the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And 
 I looked, and behold a pale horse : and his name that 
 sat on him was Death, and Hell (or properly, Hades, or 
 the Grave) followed with him. And power was given 
 unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with 
 the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with 
 the beasts of the earth," (ver. 7, 8.) This seal almost 
 explains itself. It represents Death riding rough-shod 
 over the length and breadth of the empire, mowing down 
 its population in successive thousands, and Hades, or
 
 44 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the Grave, following at his heels, to receive the victims 
 as they fell ; and here again history casts its light upon 
 prophecy, for it was during this seal, that is, from A. D. 
 248 to A. D. 268, that there occurred the most terri- 
 ble contemporaneous combination of sword, famine, and 
 pestilence that was ever visited on a guilty population. 
 Gibbon thus describes it "The empire approached dis- 
 solution, every province was invaded by barbarous mili- 
 tary tyrants. There was general famine a dreadful 
 plague, so that 4500 persons died each day at Rome." 
 And still further, to show the minute and scrupulous 
 precision of the apocalyptic symbols, a heathen writer 
 states that " The wild beasts invaded the cities, as the 
 natural consequence of the decay of man." 
 
 " And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under 
 the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word 
 of God, and for the testimony which they held : and 
 they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, 
 holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood 
 on them that dwell on the earth ? And white robes 
 were given unto every one of them ; and it was said 
 unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, 
 until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that 
 should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled," (ver. 
 9 11.) This seal comprehends, as its language plainly 
 enough proves, the era beginning at the close of the 
 third century, justly and universally called the Era of 
 the Martyrs. The Christians were slaughtered in vast 
 numbers their blood was poured out like that of vic- 
 tims at the foot of the altar, and there, like Abel's, it 
 sent its piercing cry to the heavens, saying, " How 
 long ?" The churches were overturned, the congrega- 
 tions scattered ; their Bibles burned ; the holiest and 
 best " tortured, not accepting deliverance." The Jewish 
 religion was tolerated at Rome, because it was designed 
 for Jews only ; the Egyptian religion was tolerated for 
 an analogous reason : but the Christian was proscribed 
 as religio illicita, and on the ground that Christians de- 
 clared that their faith was not for a province, a country, 
 or a continent, but for the wide world. It was the 
 missionary character of the early Christians that pro-
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 45 
 
 voked their murderers and precipitated their martyr- 
 dom. To the cry of these martyrs in their agony a 
 response was given from on high. They received 
 "white robes," the evidence of acquittal and justifica- 
 tion before God ; and they were told that they must rest 
 until subsequent martyrs, the victims of anti-Christian, 
 that is, Papal, persecution, the complement of the noble 
 army, should be numbered with them, that both might 
 thus rejoice together. 
 
 " And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, 
 and, lo, there was a great earthquake ; and the sun be- 
 came black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became 
 as blood ; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, 
 even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is 
 shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as 
 a scroll when it is rolled together ; and every mountain 
 and island were moved out of their places. And the 
 kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, 
 and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every 
 bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the 
 dens and in the rocks of the mountains ; and said to 
 the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from 
 the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the 
 wrath of the Lamb : for the great day of his wrath is 
 come ; and who shall be able to stand ?" (ver. 12 17.) 
 This language unquestionably implies the occurrence of 
 a vast revolution on the scene of the events and facts 
 represented by the previous seals. Strong as it is, it 
 cannot describe the day of judgment ; for the sequel, as 
 well as the whole chronology of the Apocalypse, dis- 
 proves this. Is, then, the strong language employed in 
 it capable of application to any less momentous occur- 
 rence ? We think it is. Certainly, similar language is 
 applied in Scripture to less important events. Thus, 
 Jeremiah, in chap. iv. 23, 24, describes Jerusalem under 
 judgment : " I beheld the earth, (viz. Judaea,) and, lo, it 
 was without form and void ; and the heavens, and they 
 had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they 
 trembled, and all the hills moved lightly." (ver. 28.) 
 " For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above 
 be black." (ver. 29.) " They shall go into the thickets,
 
 46 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 and climb up upon the rocks." And in Ilosea, (x. 8,) 
 the following language is thus used to describe the judg- 
 ments pronounced upon Israel : " The thorn and the 
 thistle shall come up on their altars ; and they shall say 
 to the mountains, Cover us ; and to the hills, Fall on us." 
 We may, in fact we must, therefore, apply the language 
 of the sixth seal to some great revolution, less conclusive 
 than the final judgment. That revolution we believe to 
 have been the final downfal of Paganism, and the adoption 
 of Christianity by the emperor Constantine, in the fourth 
 century. Our chronology also confirms this application. 
 We can scarcely conceive a transition more stupendous. 
 The champions of Paganism, Maximin, Galerius, and 
 Dioclesian, were crushed. Its sun set, its stars were 
 quenched, its firmament covered with blackness ; and 
 before the majestic progress of the Christian religion, 
 lifted from the depths of depression to the very highest 
 platform of imperial grandeur and national power, liter- 
 ally and truly, the opposing kings, and generals, and 
 soldiers, and freemen, fled. Christianity reigned at that 
 day without a rival. Whatever opinion may be formed 
 of the national recognition of Christianity by Constan- 
 tine ; whether it be thought to have been wrong in 
 principle, and injurious in its effects, or the reverse 
 (and this point has nothing to do with my present posi- 
 tion) ; it must be admitted, that his conversion to a faith 
 which all his imperial predecessors proscribed and perse- 
 cuted the detested cross glittering on the helmets, en- 
 graven on the shields, interwoven on the banners, and 
 placed on the top of the Labarum of the empire was a 
 revolution, at least not unworthy of the vivid and ex- 
 pressive language applied to this seal by the Apoca- 
 lyptic seer. These seem to me rational, consistent, and 
 historical illustrations of the symbols referred to. I 
 have read nothing at all tending to disprove my inter- 
 pretations. 
 
 But I cannot let you depart this evening without ex- 
 hibiting what is suggested by the subject a distin- 
 guishing doctrine of the gospel of Jesus. John saw, it is 
 said, what the blood of the everlasting covenant alone had 
 created "a door in heaven." What door was this?
 
 OPENING OF THE SEALS. 47 
 
 Not, surely, our primaeval innocence; for "all have 
 sinned ; " " there is none righteous, no not one." Not our 
 sufferings ; for, in tears, in trials, in martyrdom, in death, 
 there is no atoning virtue. Not our own deeds ; for by 
 deeds of law, however excellent and self-sacrificing in 
 themselves, no flesh can be saved. Not baptism ; it ad- 
 mits to the visible, not to the spiritual church. 
 
 Christ alone is that door. " I am the door." " I am 
 the way." " No man cometh unto the Father but by 
 me." He is "a new and living way." He satisfied the 
 exactions of law, bare all the penalties of sin, and re- 
 moved from between me and my reconciled God every 
 interposing obstruction, and bears me upwards to his 
 presence. It is through Him that we can see or antici- 
 pate any thing in the future. 
 
 By that door, thus revealed in every page of Chris- 
 tianity, there is the only egress for the love of God. 
 The atonement is not the creation of a love that was 
 not, but purely an egress for a love that was and is for 
 mercy to forgive, grace to help, and peace to keep us. 
 That door, too, is ingress for us, as well as egress for 
 God. By it, our prayers, our praises, and our souls, 
 may rise and enter into the upper sanctuary, and hold 
 communion with Deity. We enter now by faith ; we 
 shall enter by-and-by in fact. They who have already 
 entered have washed their robes and made them white 
 in the blood of the Lamb. They now stand before the 
 throne, and serve him day and night ; they see the 
 Lamb in the midst of the throne ; they celebrate his 
 praise perpetually, and dwell in that glorious land, to 
 delineate the features of which, the seer, in chap, xxi., 
 exhausts all poetry and borrows all imagery, and, after 
 all, helps us to see it only through a glass, darkly. 
 
 This way of access is free to all. No toll may be ex- 
 acted by priest or Pope of any of its pilgrims ; it is above 
 all price ; it is without money and without price. 
 
 It is wide enough for all. You need not try to make 
 room for yourselves by pushing aside your nearest neigh- 
 bour. None are excluded who do not exclude them- 
 selves. None fail who really try. " Strive to enter in," 
 for one day it will be shut to you for ever. Sometimes
 
 48 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 God shuts it to some even on earth, as when lie sa} r s, 
 " He is joined to idols ; let him alone." " My Spirit 
 will not strive with him any more." 
 
 To all who have not entered by this door in life, it is 
 shut at death for ever. (Matt. xxv. 11 13.) "After- 
 ward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, 
 open unto us. But he answered and said, Verily, I say 
 unto you, I know you not. Watch, therefore." And, 
 (Luke xiii. 24.) " Strive to enter in at the strait gate : 
 for many, I say unto you, will strive to enter in, and 
 shall not be able. When once the Master of the house 
 is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to 
 stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord ! 
 Lord ! open unto us ; and he shall answer and say unto 
 you, I know you not, whence ye are." 
 
 Have you entered in ? Have you crossed that thresh- 
 old which separates the sons of God from the children 
 of time ? Do not postpone this momentous question. 
 Heaven and hell are suspended on the answer. On this 
 side are " the mount that might be touched, and that 
 burned with fire, and blackness, and darkness, and tem- 
 pest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words ; " 
 scenes so awful that the meek Moses could not endure 
 them. But on the other side, to which I invite you, are 
 " Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heaven- 
 ly Jerusalem, and an innumerable company of angels, 
 and the general assembly and church of the first-born 
 which are written in heaven, and God the Judge of all, 
 and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus the 
 Mediator of the new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling 
 that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. See 
 that ye refuse not Him that speaketh." Cross the bound- 
 ary. Do not hesitate. All heaven welcomes you. Nei- 
 ther earth nor hell can hold back the willing soul.
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 GODS SEALED ONES. 
 
 1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four 
 
 corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that 
 
 the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on 
 
 any tree. 
 : And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the 
 
 seal of the living God : and he cried with a loud voice to the 
 
 four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, 
 ' Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we 
 
 have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. 
 : And I heard the number of them which were sealed : and there 
 
 were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the 
 
 tribes of the children of Israel. 
 ' Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe 
 
 of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad 
 
 were sealed twelve thousand. 
 ' Of the tribe of Aser were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe 
 
 of Nepthalim were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of 
 
 Manasses were sealed twelve thousand. 
 ' Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the 
 
 tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Is- 
 
 sachar were sealed twelve thousand. 
 ' Of the tribe of Zabulon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the 
 
 tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of 
 
 Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand. 
 ' After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man 
 
 could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and 
 
 tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed 
 
 with white robes, and palms in their hands ; 
 ' And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which 
 
 sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. 
 ' And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the 
 
 elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their 
 
 faces, and worshipped God, 
 
 ' Saying, Amen : Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanks- 
 giving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for 
 
 ever and ever. Amen. 
 ' And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these 
 
 which arc arrayed in white robes ? and whence came they ? 
 

 
 50 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 " And I said uuto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, 
 These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have- 
 washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb. 
 
 " Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day 
 and night in his temple : and he that sitteth on the throne shall 
 dwell among them. 
 
 " They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither 
 shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. 
 
 " For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, 
 and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters : and God 
 bhall wipe away all tears from their eyes." REV. vii. 
 
 IT would appear that soon after the temporary peace 
 that followed the powerful patronage of the truth by 
 Constantine, and even during the sunshine of that un- 
 exampled patronage, new and electric clouds were gather- 
 ing on the horizon of the Roman world, and preparing to 
 explode and devastate the Roman earth. The prey was 
 there, and the eagles were hovering near it. Corruption 
 was in the heart and iniquity stained the hands of the 
 nation, and therefore the denounced and corresponding 
 judgments were converging upon it. And accordingly the 
 vision discloses to us four angels commissioned to re- 
 strain the impending storm, or keep back the menaced 
 and deserved judgments, till another angel, according to 
 his mission, seals the servants of the living God, that is, 
 sets them apart, as chosen and precious, and preserved 
 them from the desolations that were about to descend on 
 the unsealed, because guilty ones. Now, in the order of 
 the chronology which we have pursued in our discussion 
 of the meaning of the seals, and in ascertaining what 
 takes place immediately after the opening of the sixth, 
 is there any record of any judgment threatened about 
 this time, and seen to be ready to light upon the empire 
 and scourge its guilty inhabitants ? Again we refer to 
 Gibbon, who says, " The threatening tempest of bar- 
 barians which so soon subverted the foundation of Ro- 
 man greatness was still repelled or suspended on the 
 frontiers." This is the language that just translates the 
 apocalyptic symbol. Now these judgments, restrained 
 by the angels, or, as interpreted by Gibbon, " suspended 
 011 the frontiers," are embodied and let loose in the sym-
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 51 
 
 bols called the trumpets, which we will explain in our 
 next. But the preliminary question naturally suggests 
 itself, what were the sins or demerits of the Church, now 
 so prosperous, or of the empire, now so dutiful, to all 
 appearance, which provoked so unsparing judgments? 
 All seems tranquillity and peace, and religion throned 
 and visibly triumphant. We shall discover the cause of 
 these judgments partly from history, and partly from 
 the characteristics of the sealed ones, which last, by im- 
 plication and contrast, reveal to us the errors and apos- 
 tacies of the Church of Constantine, the peculiar excel- 
 lencies of the sealed, disclosing the peculiar sins of the 
 unsealed. The truth is, the Church suffered more in 
 the sunshine of the royal countenance than amid the 
 blaze of burning faggots : the persecution of the heathen 
 did not injure her so much as the patronage of the pro- 
 fessing Christian. In the one case, she grasped her 
 white robes more closely around her : in the other, and 
 in unsuspecting moments, she let them go. Forgetting 
 that this world was not her rest, she laid aside, in the 
 intoxication of her visible prosperity, her diadem of 
 beauty, her raiment of victory parted with her eye- 
 sight, and put on the livery of Cresar, and ground at his 
 mill a miserable drudge : and all the seeds of the apos- 
 tacy, predicted in the Scriptures, and sown broad-cast 
 by Satan in the days of persecution, shot up under the 
 imperial patronage into a disastrous and rapid harvest. 
 After the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, the 
 profession of the gospel became fashionable it was the 
 religion of the court, the aristocracy, and the higher 
 classes of society its creed was no longer a loss, but a 
 profit the principles that once preceded their earnest 
 advocates to prison, to the stake, and to the wild beasts, 
 now paved the pathway to honour, office, and prefer- 
 ment. Christianity, in short, became a qualification for 
 office, a recommendation to Cassar, a passport to honour. 
 The catacombs in which the early Christians had wor- 
 shipped in silence and secrecy heretofore, and in which, 
 as recorded by Dr. Maitland, they had left so many in- 
 scriptions that demonstrate the primitive character of 
 E 2
 
 52 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Protestantism, were now exchanged for magnificent ca- 
 thedrals ; the tombs around which the persecuted clus- 
 tered, as the only unmolested places on the earth in 
 which they could worship the God that made it, were 
 abandoned for temples towering to the skies ; the earthen 
 vessels used heretofore in the celebration of the com- 
 munion, were displaced by golden and silver chalices 
 ceremonies became outwardly splendid the once lowly 
 ministers of the cross became the companions of kings, 
 and mitres adorned with precious stones covered those 
 heads that were recently exposed to winds and rains, 
 and all the elements of heaven. The baptismal font was 
 surrounded with innumerable candidates, drawn to it 
 rather by the prospect of temporal preferment than by 
 attachment to Christian truth, and the visible Church at 
 length rose above the State, and dictated terms to the 
 monarchs of the world, little remembering that such a 
 height was real depression. Medals were struck with 
 the image of the Phoenix, as the symbol of the rising 
 prosperity of the Christian Church ; and the enthusiasm 
 felt by Christians was almost unbounded. Mistaking 
 the spiritual character of the Church of Christ, and iden- 
 tifying its earthly grandeur with its real success, they 
 believed that the Millennium had at last dawned upon 
 the world and even in more modern times, such writers 
 as Grotius and Hammond, and even the venerable mar- 
 tyrologist Fox, were so struck with the visible prosper- 
 ity of this era, that they have recorded their conviction 
 that the reign of Constantine was the realization of the 
 Millennium of the Apocalypse. Eusebius, an historian 
 of the age, thus writes of the Church of his day "It 
 looked like the very image of the kingdom of Christ, and 
 altogether more like a dream than a reality. What so 
 many of the Lord's saints and confessors before our time 
 desired to see, and saw not ; and to hear, and heard not, 
 that is now before our eyes. It was of us the prophet 
 spake, ' The wilderness shall rejoice, and the solitary 
 place blossom as the rose : ' whereas the Church was 
 widowed and desolate, her children have now to exclaim 
 to her, ' Enlarge thy borders, the place is too strait.'
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 53 
 
 The promise is now fulfilling. ' All thy children shall 
 be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy 
 children.'" All this was grievous misconception, as we 
 shall presently see. The great multitude consisted of 
 mere professors, or embryo papists. It was not the Mil- 
 lennium, as Eusebius dreamed, but the mystery of ini- 
 quity ripening and maturing. What we call Puseyism 
 in the nineteenth century, was the predominating re- 
 ligion of the fourth. And this explains the reason of 
 Tractarian sympathy with the fourth century. Almost 
 every element of Popery was in full action, the Apos- 
 tolic Church had become to a great extent apostate, the 
 fountain of living waters had been renounced for the 
 broken cisterns of the Church, and having lost the Sun 
 of righteousness, the ministers of that day were walking 
 amidst sparks of their own kindling. The first seed of 
 the apostacy was the universal perversion of the sacra- 
 ment of baptism, and the invention of new ceremonies in 
 the celebration of it it was now understood to require 
 a priest (tepeuc) to administer it. The very loftiest epi- 
 thets of excellence and virtue were used to describe it 
 it was called " the Lord's mark," the " illumination," 
 " the preservative," " the investiture of incorruption," 
 " the salvation." Cyril, an eminent father of that day, 
 thus defines it : " Baptism is the ransom to captives, the 
 remission of offences, the death of sin, the regeneration 
 of the soul, the garment of light, the chariot to heaven, 
 the luxury of Paradise, the gift of adoption." New and 
 superstitious rites were added to it : at one time, the 
 baptized turned to the west, while the priest uttered the 
 accustomed exorcism. At another time, he turned to 
 the east, to receive the light of the Holy Spirit. He 
 was then clothed in a white dress, received a crown of 
 victory, and was enrolled as one of the elect ; and all 
 Christians, by being baptized, were pronounced saints, 
 believers, elect ; and such was the universal confidence 
 in the regenerative efficacy of this sacrament, ex opere 
 operato, that vast numbers of converts, in order to enjoy 
 the world as long as they could, delayed it to the hour 
 and agony of death, and then were baptized as their
 
 54 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 passport to heaven. Among others was Constant! ne, as 
 is shown by a medal with a relievo of that illustrious per- 
 sonage, bearing the inscription, "NATUS BAPTIZATUS," 
 that is, born again by baptism. In fact this beautiful 
 initiatory ordinance had ceased to be what its Divine 
 Author has constituted it, and instead, it had been cari- 
 catured into an amulet an exorcism a potent chemical 
 drug that served as an antidote to sin and a specific for 
 regeneration. Milner, the historian, justly remarks of 
 this period, " There was much outward religion, but the 
 true doctrine of justification was scarcely seen ; real 
 conversion was very much lost, and external baptism 
 placed in its stead." Tradition and the doctrine of re- 
 serve had superseded Scripture and overlaid the distin- 
 guishing truths of the gospel. Human priests, and spu- 
 rious propitiatory sacrifices, and ecclesiastical altars, and 
 processions and ceremonies, constituted the only visible 
 Christianity from A. D. 324 onward to A. D. 395 the 
 period during which the sealing by the angel takes place. 
 Satan had succeeded in corrupting what he could not 
 extirpate ; and out of an amalgamation of Paganism, 
 Judaism, and Christianity, had concocted a system too 
 unholy to be of heaven, and too subtle to be of earth 
 his own masterpiece, Popery. This state of things pro- 
 voked the judgments that were only suspended in the 
 hands of the restraining angels until the process which 
 we now proceed to describe was accomplished. This 
 sealing was the election of the faithful few who were to 
 be spared the calamities that were to fall fast on all 
 besides the selection of a Church from the midst of a 
 Church the numbering of the spiritual Israel, in order 
 to be marked by God with that more precious than 
 Paschal blood, which would shield them from the judg- 
 ments inflicted by the Goth, and save them from the 
 contamination of the prevailing apostacy, originated and 
 matured by Satan. Sealing implies the fact of their 
 secrecy they were God's " hidden ones," " the world 
 knew them not," their " life was hid witli Christ in 
 God ;" the springs of their joy, their sorrow, their hope, 
 their happiness, were such as the world did not under-
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 55 
 
 stand, and a stranger cotild not intermeddle with. This 
 sealing implies also their safety. They were set apart 
 for God to be preserved to his kingdom and glory, and 
 they were taught and enabled to sing while they were 
 sealed, " There is no condemnation to us who are in 
 Christ Jesus." Satan hath sought to sift us, but our 
 great High Priest has prayed that our faith fail not. 
 " Who shall separate us from the love of God ? Shall 
 tribulation, or affliction, or famine, or nakedness, or 
 peril, or sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more 
 than conquerors through Him that loved us." This 
 sealing also implies property in the thing sealed. We 
 seal only what is our own. These were not their own, 
 they were bought with a price the precious blood of a 
 Lamb without spot or blemish. And lastly, we seal 
 only what is of value. Worthless things are not fit for 
 being sealed, but these were God's "jewels," his "por- 
 tion," his " inheritance." Though the language em- 
 ployed be Jewish, yet they who were sealed were not 
 literal Jews, but Christian believers. They were Gen- 
 tile Christians, described in similar language in other 
 portions of Scripture, such as, " If Christ's, then Abra- 
 ham's seed;" and again, "Peace on all the Israel of 
 God ;" and again, to be "without Christ," is spiritually 
 equivalent to being " aliens from the commonwealth of 
 Israel." Thus Jewish phraseology is employed to de- 
 scribe Christian character. And the tribe of Levi is 
 enumerated with the rest to show that there is no dis- 
 tinctive sacrificing priesthood under the evangelical eco- 
 nomy, but that all are kings and priests unto God. It 
 was first "the few" chosen out of "the many called," 
 the God-baptized selected from the man -baptized the 
 baptized with the Spirit from the multitude baptized 
 with the water only. While we are not to pronounce 
 where God has not definitely spoken, we cannot but no- 
 tice here, and indeed throughout the Scriptures, the in- 
 timation of the multitude of the perishing the paucity 
 of the saved. Yet we must not, with the Antinomian, 
 lessen those few, or, with the latitudinarian, unscrip- 
 turally augment them. Let this alone be our personal
 
 56 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 feeling and resolve, if two only shall be saved I will try 
 to be one ; and let us not judge after the senses, never 
 let us forget that circumstances sometimes conceal far 
 more beautiful and holy characters than we are disposed 
 to think. There are dim and distant stars lighting up 
 their own orbits, though we see them not ; and there 
 are flowers in the regions of perpetual snow, unknown, 
 untrodden by the traveller's foot, but seen by God and 
 executing their mission there. The most precious gems 
 can be reached only by rending the rocks that bury 
 them, and kingly eyes alone can prize them when they 
 are brought to light. 
 
 The character of the apostacy of the Constantine era 
 is discovered, as I have said before, by the complete an- 
 tagonism of their features to the characteristics of the 
 sealed ones, who are described from verse 14 to the close 
 of the chapter. Did great numbers rush to the bap- 
 tismal font for baptism ? The God-sealed were "a great 
 multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, 
 and kindred, and people, and tongues." Did the bap- 
 tized receive white garments ? These sealed ones were 
 " arrayed in white robes." Did the former receive 
 crowns and palms ? These latter had fadeless palms and 
 crowns of glory. Were the first purified in the waters 
 of baptism ? These last had " washed their robes and 
 made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Did the 
 first come forth from the Constantine prosperity and 
 visible splendour ? The second came " out of great tri- 
 bulation." Were the former in the outward visible 
 Church ? The latter were in the inner Church or true 
 holy place. Thus, each clause that describes an excel- 
 lence of the sealed ones, reflects its light on a correspond- 
 ing corruption of the unsealed or apostate. At this very 
 period, a noble specimen of the sealed ones was allowed 
 to come within the horizon, as if to indicate by the con- 
 trast the character of the age, viz. Augustine, bishop of 
 Hippo. He is revealed specially as an instance. He 
 was converted, A. D. 385, by the ministry of Ambrose, 
 and appointed to his office, A. D. 395. The 'doctrine on 
 which he most frequently and eloquently expatiated, was
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 57 
 
 the doctrine of election, or the sovereignty of the grace 
 of God. He describes, in fact, that very process, viz. 
 election, which was the distinctive process of his age ; his 
 "City of God" was written to show the distinction 
 between true Christians and the merely baptized. 
 True Christians he calls " the elect Israelites," " God's 
 sealed ones," the 144,000 : as if the prophetic language 
 of the Apocalypse was felt by Augustine to be descrip- 
 tive of the Christians indeed of his day, and as if he felt 
 he was raised to extend it by his mission, as well as to 
 call attention to the distinguishing work which Christ 
 was then carrying on. The enlightened evangelical 
 views embodied and eloquently enforced in the writings 
 of Augustine were very much the means, in the absence 
 of Scripture, of perpetuating vital truth through the 
 dreary ages of the history of mediaeval Europe. Luther, 
 an Augustinian monk, owns his obligation to Augustine ; 
 Pascal and Quesnel derived their purest light from his 
 lamp ; and in that long chain of faithful witnesses which 
 connects the Protestantism of the 19th century with the 
 Christianity of the first, Augustine was not the least 
 resplendent link, or least effective conductor of true 
 evangelical religion. 
 
 In reading the beautiful characteristics and consum- 
 mation of the sealed ones which follow in this chapter, 
 one can sympathize with the poetic sensibilities of Burns, 
 who said he could never read this passage without tears. 
 Its poetry must touch where its vital and sanctifying power 
 may be unfelt. In this bright Apocalypse of the safety 
 of the saints on earth, and their happiness in heaven, it 
 is worthy of remark, there is not one touch on character 
 or feature local, sectarian, or national ; as if it were 
 designed to condemn and crush, by the contrast, the pre- 
 dominating feeling of the 4th century, which made the 
 Chair the Church the ceremony, every thing, and 
 vital religion nothing. Has this vision no lesson for us 
 also ? If we will only look through the door which John 
 saw open in heaven, we shall see this at least, that the 
 questions about which Christians quarrel on earth are 
 not known in glory ; that subjects that have agitated
 
 58 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 men's passions in the Church below, are not even mooted 
 in the Church above ; and names that have filled the 
 wide world with their sound are hushed beside the 
 Throne of God. What fierce sectarians have been proud 
 of is there seen to have evaporated as worthless. What 
 millions undervalue is there seen to endure for ever. 
 
 Those revealed in this vision appear to have shared 
 in little of the prosperity of the Constantino era ; for 
 it is said, they came out of great tribulation. Some had 
 pined in dungeons, or perished in the devouring flames ; 
 others had died in exile, or had been devoured by the 
 wild beasts : their blood had tinged every river, and their 
 ashes had been strewn over every acre of the earth ; all 
 elements of power, charged with all fiendish passions, had 
 been let loose upon them. Many, too, in the midst of 
 the Constantine prosperity of the Church, had endured 
 in private a life-long martyrdom from friends and rela- 
 tions, unseen by the world, but no less real and painful 
 and true. All, however, came out of it, and came to 
 heaven, and are there now, and ever will be. They 
 were not born in heaven like the angels, but introduced 
 into heaven as saints. Is there not something of the 
 character of Constantine Christianity visible in our day ? 
 Abounding formalism, fashionable religion, growing 
 apostacy, increase of ceremony, and sympathy with 
 Rome, are tokens and signs too palpable to be overlooked 
 or mistaken : and if it be so, the sealed ones of the 19th 
 century will also have to taste the tribulation which was 
 meted out to the sealed ones of the 4th century, and that 
 too very soon. In such tribulation, however, the se- 
 renity felt within will lighten the darkness that closes 
 from without the inner light turns into rainbow glories 
 the outer tribulation ; the hardest storm is always the 
 shortest ; and all tribulations, however numerous or 
 severe, are left at the threshold of heaven. The waves 
 of this world's troubled sea scarcely kiss the shores of 
 eternity. All the tribulation, however, that we feel in 
 our course to glory, we learn from this passage, is not 
 the cause, but the concomitant only of our salvation. 
 The ground of the acceptance of these martyrs was not
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 59 
 
 their own tears, or sufferings, or excellencies. The 
 tears of repentance are beautiful and holy the fruits of 
 a pure life fair and precious but to trust in the one or 
 in the other as the foundation of our hope, is to turn the 
 fragrant blossom into corruption, the delicious fruit into 
 instant decay, and our holiest ornament into shame. Nor 
 was it their own blood that placed them there. These 
 saints were martyrs, and if ever human blood had virtue 
 to expiate sin, that blood was theirs, but it had no ex- 
 piatory virtue ; they neither so believed nor so suffered ; 
 it was not the blood they shed for Christ, but the blood 
 which Christ shed for them, that saved them ; his suf- 
 ferings alone are expiatory, his soul alone was made an 
 offering for sin in Him alone we have redemption, 
 through his blood he drank the cup alone, he trod the 
 winepress alone ; he suffered alone, he conquered and 
 rose alone ; man had no part in his sufferings, and man 
 can have no share in the glory that results from them. 
 The special virtue here attributed to that blood is that 
 of cleansing or pardoning. The stain of sin was so 
 deep that nothing short of this could expunge it, and its 
 heinousness so great that no other could pardon it, while 
 the extent of its efficacy is still to-day so boundless, if 
 we have recourse to it, that though our sins be as scar- 
 let they shall be as wool, and though they be like purple 
 they shall be as snow. It is not venial sin only, or 
 original sin only, or actual sin only, but all sin from 
 which it cleanses. 1 Cor. vi. 9 1 1, gives the catalogue 
 of those who had felt its virtues, and had been justified 
 and sanctified. These saints in heaven, it is obvious, 
 must personally have had recourse to this sacrifice, for 
 it is said " they washed their robes." Bread must be 
 eaten before it can nourish us ; the provision is not 
 enough unless we personally apprehend it. Christ's 
 death must be personally received and rested on by faith 
 in order to be our life. The sole cause of the introduc- 
 tion of these saints into glory was this great fact, for it 
 is added, " therefore are they before the throne." It was 
 not their election from eternity, however true this may 
 have been, but their acceptance of the Saviour's sacrifice
 
 60 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 that is here declared to have constituted their right to 
 heaven. How beautiful too are the features of the 
 worship of these glorified ones, it is unsuspended by the 
 calls of Caesar, or the wanderings of the heart, or the 
 frailties of humanity ; it is presented " day and night," 
 and by a beautiful paradox, " they rest," and yet " they 
 rest not." It was a united worship, for all nations, and 
 kindreds, and tongues were there. There was no strife 
 in their hearts, and therefore no discord in their songs ; 
 there is a greater mixture in heaven than there is this 
 evening in Exeter Hall. Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, 
 Moses, Isaiah, John, Peter, Augustine, Martin Luther, 
 and innumerable others, constitute that celestial choir, 
 and contribute to its ceaseless harmonies. They " stand" 
 the true attitude of praise, as if conscious they were wel- 
 come, and yet they give the glory to the Lamb, as con- 
 scious they deserve nothing ; and they "stand before the 
 throne of God," to show that they may enter where the 
 high priest alone, and none besides, entered once a 
 year, even the Holy of Holies. But whilst they have 
 thus the position of priests and the palms of conquerors, 
 they are not discharged from the duties of servants, for 
 "they serve him day and night." Dependency is the 
 order of heaven, it ought to be the law on earth, as it is 
 of the very essence of the creature. But whilst they thus 
 praise and serve the Lamb on their part, " He dwells 
 among them," like the Shechinah of old, and feeds them 
 with the hidden manna, and refreshes them from foun- 
 tains of living water, and all tears are not only wiped 
 away, which might leave it possible for them to flow 
 again, but they are, as the word means when translated 
 literally, wiped out; as if to teach us, that not only the 
 marks and channels of tears shall be blotted out, but that 
 the very springs and fountains of them shall be utterly 
 and for ever annihilated. 
 
 In contemplating these magnificent pictures of the 
 better land, are we not sometimes tempted to exclaim 
 with David " O that I had wings like a dove, for then 
 would I fly away and be at rest. Lo, then would I 
 wander far off ; I would hasten my escape from the
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 61 
 
 windy storm and tempest." David felt, what we feel 
 more or less, that there is no spot between the nadir 
 and the zenith, or from the polar snow to the equatorial 
 sunshine, in this nether world, which we can pronounce 
 to be our rest. All creation is too poor to make the soul 
 rich, and too low to make it happy. Satiety produces 
 new restlessness, and the song of flattery soon becomes 
 hackneyed ; and fairest spots, by enjoyment, lose their 
 charms. The culminating point of the soul's happiness 
 is the throne of Deity alone ; and if we have any fore- 
 taste or earnest within us of heaven, it will increase our 
 desire to meet and mingle with those sealed ones whom 
 the Lamb leads to living fountains of waters. In that 
 land there will not only be no tears, and no spring or 
 fountain of tears, but there will be nothing to excite 
 them. There will be no sickness, for "the inhabitant 
 shall not say, I am sick;" and there will be no more 
 death, for the last enemy is destroyed : and standing on 
 the shores of that peaceful sea, we shall strike a nobler 
 than Miriam's harp, and celebrate the utter destruction 
 of all that denies or grieves the sealed ones of our God 
 and his Christ. 
 
 Amid that throng not only will the illustrious names 
 we have enumerated appear in robes of shining glory, 
 but those too we loved and laboured to retain yet a little 
 longer on earth, will also meet us there. Our relatives 
 in eternity outnumber our relatives in time. The cata- 
 logue of the living we love becomes less, and in antici- 
 pation we see the perpetually lengthening train of the 
 departed ; and by their flight our affections grow gradu- 
 ally less glued to earth, and more allied to heaven. It 
 is not in vain that the images of our departed children, 
 and near and dear ones, are laid up in memory, as in a 
 picture gallery, from which the ceaseless surge of this 
 world's cares cannot obliterate them : they wait there for 
 the light of the resurrection-day, to stand forth holy, 
 beautiful, and happy our fellow-worshippers for ever. 
 
 There, too, distracting and perplexing doubts and 
 cares, the cold and chilling shadows of which fall so 
 often on the sunniest soul, shall have disappeared for
 
 62 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 ever. We are here too remote from the Sun of right- 
 eousness, to be wholly rid of them. But there we are in 
 the presence of Christ himself, who is light, and no dim 
 smoke darkens the rays of that glory, and no exhalations 
 rise and rest upon that clear, beautiful, and illimitable 
 horizon. All those disputes that agitate the Church die 
 the instant they touch the confines of glory. Bitter con- 
 troversies are unheard angry expressions are alien to 
 the language of heaven ; and amid the swell of perpetual 
 anthems and hallelujahs, not the least rich is the har- 
 mony of kindred hearts and accordant spirits. 
 
 All temptations, and the very tempter himself, are 
 removed to the distance of infinitude from the confines 
 of glory. There are neither fears within, nor fightings 
 without. There is neither the poverty which is a bur- 
 den, nor the wealth which is a snare nor the smiles 
 which sting nor the applause which poisons. Want 
 shall not tempt to do wrongly, nor passion provoke to 
 act rashly. There will be no fear, because no possibility 
 of falling. There will be, in one word, perfect satisfac- 
 tion that which the heart of every man yearns for on 
 earth, and of which the Christian's heart alone enjoys a 
 prelibation and foretaste : " when I awake I shall be 
 satisfied ;" "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him 
 as he is ;" all veils rent all glasses broken all clouds 
 scattered, and the faint twinklings of night lost in the 
 effulgence of eternal noon. The river of life shall flow 
 through us for ever. " Now, Lord," we may well pray, 
 " lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." " I desire 
 to depart and be with Christ." 
 
 In order to reach this state of felicity, and be for 
 ever with those sealed ones, and the Angel of the Cove- 
 nant who seals them, we must renounce all right or 
 title, or merit in ourselves, and all hope of purchase, at 
 any price, that man, Priest or Pope, can pay ; the 
 price is the precious blood of the Lamb. Ju Christ 
 alone is our right to heaven our hope of glory our 
 certainty of acceptance. He seals or sets apart for hea- 
 ven those only who have washed their robes and made 
 them white in his blood. This is God's own immutable
 
 GOD'S SEALED ONES. 63 
 
 arrangement. No other way leads to those " living 
 fountains of waters." No other name has power. We 
 must be in Him ou earth, in order to be with Him in 
 heaven. Unless we realize here that communion of our 
 spirit with Christ's spirit directly, and not indirectly 
 only through the medium of truth, unless we become 
 one with Christ as really as we are one in nature and 
 responsibility with Adam unless we are wholly repre- 
 sented in and by Christ here, we cannot expect to reign 
 and rejoice with him hereafter. 
 
 Let us study the lineaments of the coming glory, as 
 these are revealed in the blessed Bible. The most effec- 
 tive way to dislodge an evil, or inferior preference, is to 
 iring the heart into contact with a higher and holier, 
 that is with heaven. The sun shining puts out the 
 fire ; so the lustre and overpowering glory of the home 
 of the sealed ones will so pale all that man thinks mag- 
 nificent, that we shall thirst for that day which knows 
 no night, and to be one of those of whom it is written 
 " These are they which came out of great tribulation, 
 and have washed their robes, and made them white in 
 the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the 
 throne of God, and serve him day and night in his tem- 
 ple, and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among 
 them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. 
 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall 
 feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of 
 waters ; and God shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes." 
 
 Brethren, what evidence without what conscious- 
 ness within have you of a share and interest and lot 
 witli this illustrious throng. All its virtues, its attri- 
 butes, its fruits, are this day freely offered you from the 
 throne of God. Christ invites, beseeches you through 
 his ministers, to flee from that alienation and state of 
 wrath in which sin has plunged you, and to lay hold on 
 that sacrifice of unchanging efficacy that ransom of in- 
 finite virtue, than which there is no other passport to 
 everlasting glory. You are not mere auditors of these
 
 64 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 truths this evening, having no interest at stake. That 
 book which decides all disputes, and discloses all respon- 
 sibilities, points to us as vitally concerned in these 
 momentous questions, that we are lost by nature and 
 perishing from the earth every instant, and that our 
 restoration to the friendship of God and to the hopes of 
 heaven is suspended on our reception or rejection of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. We are within either of two at- 
 tractions. We are the subjects of one or other of two 
 processes. We are still sinners by nature or now saints 
 by grace. Where and what are you ? Answer it to 
 your own consciences answer it to that God who is 
 greater than conscience.
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE FOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 
 
 : And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in 
 
 heaven about the space of half an hour. 
 1 And I saw the seven angels which stood before God ; and to 
 
 them were given seven trumpets. 
 ' 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 into the earth : and there were voices, and thunder- 
 ings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. 
 ' And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared 
 
 themselves to sound. 
 ' The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled 
 
 with blood, and they were cast upon the earth : and the third 
 
 part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. 
 ' And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain 
 
 burning with fire was cast into the sea : and the third part of the 
 
 sea became blood ; 
 ' And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and 
 
 had life, died ; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. 
 ' And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from 
 
 heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third 
 
 part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters ; 
 ' And the name of the star is called Wormwood : and the third 
 
 part of the waters became wormwood ; and many men died of 
 
 the waters, because they were made bitter. 
 ' And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was 
 
 smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of 
 
 the stars ; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the 
 
 day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. 
 ' And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of 
 
 heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabit- 
 r
 
 66 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 ers of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of 
 the three angels, which are yet to sound ! " UEV. via. 
 
 IT is here stated that there had been silence in heaven 
 during the space of half an hour. It is obvious, that 
 this silence must be that which existed during the re- 
 straint of the impending storms intrusted to the four 
 angels, as I described in the previous lecture, when, in 
 the language of Gibbon, " the threatening tempests of 
 barbarians were repelled or suspended on the frontier." 
 This was a solemn pause an opportunity of repentance 
 a respite of judgment, but was unheeded by those who 
 were most deeply interested. To be able to estimate the 
 length of time contained in an Apocalyptic half hour, 
 we must bear in mind, that all the visions embodied in 
 the Apocalypse, extending from the year 97 to 1800 
 years and upwards, passed in chorographic procession 
 before the eyes of John in the course of the Lord's Day, 
 that is, in the course of a period of twelve literal hours. 
 That Lord's Day was a miniature chronology of the 
 world. If this be as we have stated it, then each hour 
 of the 12 hours constituting the Lord's Day from sun- 
 rise to sunset, would be the exponent of 150 years, and 
 half an hour of 75 years, or thereabouts. If this calcu- 
 lation be an approximation to the truth, as we think it 
 is, there will be found recorded in the pages of history, 
 a respite, or repose, of 75 years, about the time indicated 
 by that point in the chronology of the Apocalypse, at 
 which we have arrived. Accordingly we find, that from 
 the final triumph of Constantine to the invasion of the 
 empire by Alaric, that is, from A. D. 324 to 395, there 
 intervened the repose, or rather suspension of judg- 
 ment, so dramatically embodied in the clause, " there 
 was," or rather there had been, " silence in heaven for 
 about the space of half an hour." 
 
 There is then seen by the Evangelist, before the 
 sounding of the trumpet, another angel, who stood at 
 the altar having a golden censer, offering incense with 
 the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar, which 
 was before the throne. That this angel is the Angel of 
 the everlasting Covenant, the Son of God, the great 
 High Priest, there can scarcely be a doubt ; for, first, he
 
 THE FOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 67 
 
 occupied the holy place which the typical high priest 
 alone, under the Jewish economy, might approach 
 and in the next place, he had a golden censer, which was 
 the distinctive possession of the high priest, the other 
 priests having silver ones ; and in the last place, none 
 but He, who is God as well as man, could have received 
 and have offered up the prayers of all saints, of any one 
 period, or of all ages upon earth, or have rendered them 
 acceptable through the incense of his priestly interces- 
 sion. There is no proof here of the propriety of angel 
 worship. If we read the description here given, in the 
 light of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we shall have no 
 doubt. 
 
 I stated in a previous lecture, that the characteristic 
 features of the sealed or selected thousands, pointed out, 
 by implication and by contrast, the prevailing features of 
 the apostacy, peculiar to that day. The prominent truth 
 was then, as it is now, the correlative of the prevailing 
 error. We may, therefore, fully expect that the por- 
 trait of truth with which this chapter begins, is designed 
 and fitted to reflect its light upon the corresponding 
 errors and corruptions of the era. Now, the two great 
 truths set forth in this exhibition of Christ at the altar, 
 are, first, his one perfect propitiatory sacrifice, once for 
 all, by which alone there is forgiveness and remission 
 of sins, here symbolized by Christ, at the brazen or sa- 
 crificial altar ; and, secondly, the no less vital doctrine of 
 the prevailing and perpetual intercession of Christ, in 
 virtue of which he saves to the uttermost all that come 
 unto God by him, represented by the golden altar of 
 incense. Were these two doctrines, then, at all obscured, 
 perverted, or denied, during this period? were the 
 peculiar heresies that impugn them prevalent ? these 
 two great truths were all but eclipsed, and in this 
 eclipse began the development of the features and ele- 
 ments of the rapidly maturing Apostacy. This is an 
 historical fact. The period specified, viz., about A. D. 
 395, was notorious for the proposal and adoption of new 
 ways of propitiating God, alien and contrary to the 
 truths revealed in the gospel, and utterly inconsistent 
 with the doctrines of the cross, as well as by the invo- 
 F 2
 
 68 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 cation of saints and relics, as if these were endued with 
 mediatorial and intercessory virtue. The great and 
 perfect sacrifice of Calvary was superseded by spurious 
 offerings, and the intercession of the great High Priest, 
 the only intercession in the skies, was lost sight of, and 
 the worshippers implored and leaned on the so-called 
 intercessions of saints. "The Ante-Nicene Christians," 
 says Waddington, "shrunk from idolatry, but in A. D. 
 395, there was the stupid veneration of bones and relics, 
 and prayer was thought never so efficacious as when 
 offered at the tomb of a saint." Gibbon says, "a pro- 
 fane spectacle succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship 
 of the Christian Congregation ; the smoke of incense, 
 the glare of lamps and tapers, and prayers directed to 
 the bones and ashes of saints." So popular was this 
 miserable declension from true Christianity, and so truly 
 debased were priests and people both, that the monks 
 earned a livelihood by gathering and hawking the re- 
 puted relics of pseudo saints ; and the misguided people 
 parted freely with liberal sums of money, in order to 
 possess the alleged depositaries of awful and saving vir- 
 tues. The mystery of iniquity rapidly approached its 
 predicted maturity. Antichrist loomed into view. In 
 the words of Coleridge, " the pastors of the Church had 
 gradually changed the life and light of the gospel into 
 the very superstition they were commissioned to dis- 
 perse, and thus paganized Christianity in order to christen 
 paganism." Human sufferings were substituted as pro- 
 pitiatory sacrifices for the sufferings of Christ, which 
 alone, by their very nature, are truly expiatory and 
 vicarious human merits took the place, and were asso- 
 ciated with the infinite perfection of his righteousness, 
 and the supposititious prayers of glorified martyrs were 
 had recourse to instead of the mediation of Him whc 
 ever liveth to make intercession for us. With few ex- 
 ceptions, the Fathers of this century were tainted by 
 the predominant Puseyism. Even Jerome, the learned 
 and talented advocate of Presbytery as the primitive 
 government of the Church, was utterly corrupted by 
 the contagion of the almost universal apostacy, and 
 became the eloquent and strenuous, and very often the
 
 THE FOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 69 
 
 acrimonious advocate, not only of the monkery he per- 
 sonally practised, but of the duty and advantage of the 
 worship of saints and of the virtues of relics, the ubi- 
 quity of which, in the fury of his fanaticism, he did not 
 hesitate boldly to maintain. Augustine and Vigilantius, 
 the former in the main truly evangelical, and the latter 
 emphatically Protestant, were the two most brilliant ex- 
 ceptions, and were apparently raised up amidst the almost 
 universal declension to uphold and maintain the glory of 
 Christ, as Priest, and Sacrifice, and Altar, as before. The 
 first stood up, especially, for the Sovereignty of God on the 
 one hand, and for that regenerating work, which is ex- 
 clusively the prerogative of the Holy Spirit, on the other. 
 Very beautifully, therefore, as if in the conscious discharge 
 of the duties of his special mission, does Augustine now 
 write, A. D. 400 : " Whom shall I look to as my Medi- 
 ator ? shall I go to angels ? A mediator between God 
 and man must have the nature of both. The true Medi- 
 ator, whom in thy secret mercy thou hast shown to the 
 humble, the man Christ Jesus, hath appeared as Medi- 
 ator between mortal sinners and the immortal One that 
 by his Divine righteousness he might justify the ungodly. 
 How hast thou loved us, O Father, in delivering up thy 
 Son for us ; for when He, our Priest and Sacrifice, was 
 subject to death, well may my hope be strong in such an 
 intercessor." This was indirect but powerful refutation 
 of error. So beautifully applicable is Augustine's the- 
 ology to that age. 
 
 We learn from the facts of this period, that it is im- 
 possible to be morally neutral. Apostacy from truth is 
 necessarily the adoption of falsehood ; the egress of the 
 one is, of necessity, the ingress of the other ; the soul, 
 like nature, abhors a vacuum ; we have not a choice be- 
 tween the reception of truth and remaining indifferent 
 or passive ; our choice really lies between the reception 
 of truth and the reception of a lie it is now, as it al- 
 ways has been, Christ or Antichrist, the Gospel or the 
 Apostacy. " He that is not with me is against me." 
 There never has been in the history of the past, nor will 
 there ever be in the arrangements of futurity, any posi- 
 tion of real indifference, with respect to truth and error.
 
 70 APOCALTI'TIC SKKTCHES. 
 
 or of absolute neutrality, with respect to Christ and 
 Antichrist. We must either hate the gospel as the 
 most detestable imposture, or we must love it with all 
 the energies of our heart. In the presence of the stu- 
 pendous facts it asserts, and in the hearing of its demand 
 of instant decision, it is impossible to be neutral. True 
 religion, from its intrinsic importance, demands our in- 
 tensest love ; and a false religion, from its mischievous 
 effects, our intensest hatred. Our only safi-ty against 
 the intrusive influence of deadly error, is profounder ap- 
 preciation of eternal truths. We need to know and feel 
 this in these days. 
 
 We now come to an analysis of the Trumpet Symbols 
 enumerated in this chapter. It will throw some light 
 upon this remarkable imagery, if we ascertain the uses 
 of trumpets under the Levitical economy. These were, 
 1st, To proclaim the Sabbaths, the various festivals, and 
 hours and occasions of thanksgiving and praise. 2ndly, 
 To announce and give the signal for the forward move- 
 ments of the camp, in the wilderness ; and 3rdly, To 
 proclaim war against the enemies of Israel. These were 
 substantially the moral ends of the sounding of the trum- 
 pets in this book. To the one hundred and forty-four 
 thousand, the sealed, and pardoned, and sanctified ones, 
 the representatives of the children of God, the true Is- 
 rael, these trumpets proclaimed prosperity, peace, and 
 perpetual progress. To the Apostate Church, they 
 sounded the tocsin of battle, the clang of conflict, the 
 approach of judgment, defeat, destruction. And as the 
 seven trumpet-blasts, on seven successive days, preceded 
 the destruction of Jericho, so these seven trumpet- 
 soundings precede the destruction of its great antitype, 
 the Apostacy. 
 
 In order to explain the allusion in this, and in succeed- 
 ing chapters, to " the third part of the earth," and " the 
 third part of the sea," and " the third part of the rivers," 
 and " the third part of the sun," I may state, what will 
 again serve to illustrate the minute accuracy of the Apoca- 
 lyptic allusions that in the time of Constantine, the Ro- 
 man empire was divided into three great sections : to Con- 
 stantine was assigned Gaul, Spain, Britain, Italy, Africa
 
 TIIE FOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 71 
 
 to Licinius, the Illjrian Prefecture to Maximin, the 
 Asiatic Provinces and Egypt ; each section had its 
 share of the Mediterranean, and its frontier river, the 
 Rhine, the Danube, or the Euphrates the four first 
 trumpets apply to the western third of the empire, and 
 proclaim the awful and deserved judgments that fell 
 successively upon it. 
 
 The first trumpet sounds, and the following is the 
 dramatic picture of its effects : a storm bursts on the 
 western division of the empire sweeps over Italy 
 darkens the gigantic Alps, and lowers upon the peaks of 
 the Apennines Gaul and Spain are desolated by it 
 " blood," that is, life, perishes what was the garden of 
 the Lord before it, becomes the blasted desert behind 
 it. This storm was the incursion of Alaric and the 
 Goths on the Roman provinces in A. D. 396. This 
 Gothic chief started into prominence like a supernatural 
 meteor, as if be had descended from the clouds, or 
 emerged from the deep. He was inaugurated by the 
 Gothic chiefs as king of the Visi-Goths, by being seated 
 or throned upon a shield, an inauguration truly ex- 
 planatory of his mission ; as if aware of what lay before 
 him, he told a monk that he felt a secret and preter- 
 natural impulse, that impelled his march to the gates of 
 Rome. Onward therefore he moved forthwith like the 
 storm-cloud, portentous and desolating, borne by a force 
 not his own ; havoc and destruction in his path, victory 
 in his van, and ruin in his rear. The capital was soon 
 reached, and his fire-brands were seen blazing amid the 
 proud palaces of Imperial Rome; and "the consuming 
 flames of war," writes Gibbon, " spread from the banks 
 of the Rhine over the seventeen provinces of Gaul" 
 and the scene of peace and prosperity was changed into 
 a desert. " This passage of the Rhine," adds Gibbon, 
 " by the Vandals, may be considered as the fall of the 
 Roman empire." It was during this period, from A. D. 
 400 to A. D. 410, that the Apostate Church, true to its 
 character, had recourse, in litanies, processions, and other 
 public exhibitions, for safety and protection, to the in- 
 tercession of patron saints. This added, to its sins, but 
 not to its deliverance. Alaric soon accomplished his
 
 72 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 mission, and ceased when it was done. The last echoes 
 of the first trumpet /lied on the desert air, and Alnric 
 died also, and was buried as strangely and as speedily 
 as he was throned. A sepulchre was dug for him by 
 Roman prisoners in the bed of a river, and the Vandal 
 chief was laid in it, adorned with the richest spoils of 
 Rome, while the prisoners who dug it were instantly 
 killed, lest they should disclose the secret of his resting- 
 place. How complete is the coincidence between the 
 storm-cloud careering on the winds, and leaving desola- 
 tion behind it, and the course of the northern Goth, 
 stamping the traces of his presence in desolated fields, 
 smouldering ruins, and widows and orphans. Is not 
 the coincidence so strong as to justify the application, 
 were there even no other grounds than the compa- 
 rison ? 
 
 The second trumpet sounds, and a new storm sweeps 
 over the Mediterranean Sea, and convulses the islands 
 that slept peacefully on its bosom. A volcano or burn- 
 ing mountain falls amid the waves, the Adriatic boils 
 from its depths, the whole coast of Africa is lashed with 
 intermingling flames and floods, ships are set on fire, 
 and blood is shed. This imagery is used by Jeremiah, 
 when he likens Babylon to a burning mountain, just as 
 the former imagery of the first trumpet is employed by 
 Isaiah to describe Shalmanezer and the Assyrians. 
 Have we then an explanation of this trumpet in the facts 
 of history chronologically and pictorially true ? AVe 
 have. GENESERIC appears upon the stage, the equal 
 of ALARIC, and falls like a burning mountain upon those 
 very shores and islands, which his predecessor Alaric 
 had spared he and his Vandals crossed the African 
 sea laid siege to Hippo, the city in which Augustine 
 laboured, who, as if to present us with evidence of the 
 faithfulness of God to his promises, was removed by 
 death about that time, to the white-robed company in 
 glory, that he might be spared from witnessing or being 
 injured by the devastations that followed. Hippo, his 
 bishopric, and Carthage, were taken by the Goth and 
 burned, the Vandal fleet swept the Mediterranean, its 
 isles were subjugated its coasts ravaged and its peo-
 
 THE FOUR FTRST TRUMPETS. 73 
 
 pie put to the sword. Perhaps it may illustrate the all 
 but unearthly character of Geneseric, if we quote the 
 question put to him by his pilot. What course shall I 
 steer ? The reply of the chief was, " Leave that to the 
 winds, they will transport us to the guilty coasts whose 
 inhabitants have provoked the Divine justice." Twice 
 the Romans mustered all their war ships to destroy him, 
 and twice he annihilated them ; and this he did, as if to 
 prove his being the agent intended by the Spirit, chiefly 
 by sending fire-ships into the midst of their fleet. He was 
 the great destroyer of the sea, his march was on its waters, 
 its bosom was his battle-field, the chimes of its waves 
 the sounds that summoned to the battle. " He spread 
 desolation," says Gibbon, " from the Columns of Hercules 
 to the mouths of the Nile ;" and having finished the work 
 assigned him under this trumpet, he also dies, and disap- 
 pears from the scene, and lives only on the page of his- 
 tory to attest the truth of the predictions of Christ. 
 
 The third trump'et sounds a burning meteor descends 
 and lights upon the rivers, the springs, and fountains of 
 the earth it sweeps along the Danube and the Teiss, 
 poisoning their waters, and spreading incalculable mis- 
 chief wherever the glaciers melt at the breasts of the 
 parent Alps, and pour down their waters on the valleys 
 below. 
 
 Was there any calamity about A. D. 450 correspond- 
 ing to, and sufficient to exhaust, the imagery here em- 
 ployed ? At this very time arose ATTILA, commonly 
 called the scourge of God, fierce, powerful, indomitable 
 his subject princes deemed him supernatural bar- 
 barous kings, says the historian, would not presume to 
 gaze with steady eye on what they deemed his divine 
 majesty. Attila and his victorious Huns moved along 
 the Danube, depopulating and wasting its banks ; they 
 next poured down the llhine, leaving its fair valley a 
 scene of havoc and woe reducing to ashes Strasburg, 
 Worms, Spires, Mentz, Treves. After having thus 
 burned up the rivers, he pushed his victorious forces to- 
 ward the fountains contiguous to the Alps. Pavia, Ve- 
 rona, Mantua, Milan, successively were embittered with 
 wormwood, and were made to drink waters of gall, and
 
 74 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 were scorched and destroyed by the heat of this " great 
 star, burning as a lamp." Suddenly, and apparently 
 without cause, he returns, recrosses the Danube, and is 
 struck dead with apoplexy the meteor having done its 
 work was quenched, and its last lurid rays mingled with 
 the expiring echoes of the third trumpet. 
 
 The fourth trumpet sounds. The Western empire 
 has been desolated by land, by sea, and along its rivers 
 but its sun, and moon, and stars were still shining. 
 Suddenly one third of each of these luminaries is dark- 
 ened, and the whole firmament over that third is covered 
 with blackness. How was this fulfilled ? Thus : The 
 Roman empire had lost its provinces, its maritime pos- 
 sessions, its armies and navies, and all the sinews of its 
 strength but it still retained the titles and insignia of 
 sovereignty, it had the outward splendour without the 
 solid foundations of a nation. One other blow, and only 
 one, was required to be struck to complete the entire 
 desolation of the Western third the work was to be 
 done the workman was at hand. ODOACER, one of the 
 chiefs of ATTILA, starts suddenly into prominence 
 marches at the head of the Heruli into the very heart of 
 Italy, and commands that the office of Roman Emperor 
 of the West shall be abolished, and the last shadow of 
 departing sovereignty Romulus Augustus, a name 
 that ominously embraced those of the founder and of the 
 greatest ruler of the empire, abdicated without an attempt 
 at resistance, and the imperial insignia were transferred 
 to Constantinople, and the Emperor of the East exer- 
 cised the sovereignty thenceforth. Thus one third of 
 the Imperial Sun was extinguished, and after Senators 
 and Consuls had twinkled for a little, a night of darkness 
 and of unparalleled calamities fell upon the Mistress of 
 the earth the Queen of nations the persecutor of the 
 saints. Its foundations, righteousness and truth, perish- 
 ed, and it fell. Romans ruined Rome moral disease 
 marked out the pathways along which the Goths, the 
 Huns, and Vandals, converged and marched to the capi- 
 tal, and reduced that great empire to a wreck. 
 
 After these four trumpets had sounded, and between 
 the fourth and the fifth a woe is pronounced from
 
 THE TOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 75 
 
 heaven, and is heard by the inhabitants of the earth 
 the hearts of the nations responded to this cry of woe, 
 and almost universal presentiments of its approach were 
 felt and expressed. Of this we have abundant evidence 
 in the writings of the Fathers, who almost universally 
 expected about this time the end of the world they 
 believed that St. Paul's prediction, 2 Thess. ii. 3, referred 
 to the rise and development of Antichrist and that 
 the expression "he who lets," described the Roman 
 sovereignty and empire as the only obstacle to the de- 
 velopment of that Apostacy, and this Antichristian 
 Apostacy they thought would immediately precede the 
 destruction of the earth. Tertullian writes, " The end 
 of the world is kept back by the intervention of the 
 Roman empire." Jerome cried, from his monastery, 
 " The Roman world rushes to destruction the hinder- 
 ance to Antichrist's way is removing." Martin of Tours 
 said, " Antichrist is already born : " and when John the 
 Faster, of Constantinople, assumed the title of Universal 
 Bishop, Gregory declared, that " he who did so is the 
 forerunner of Antichrist." In a Missive, then the most 
 public document in the world, Gregory expressed his 
 conviction, that the last judgment was at hand, earth- 
 quakes and plagues desolated the earth, and in one, at 
 Constantinople, 10,000 are stated to have died daily ; 
 and a writer Procopius quoted by Gibbon, says, that 
 one hundred millions were exterminated in the age of 
 Justinian, by plague and pestilence and famine. Thus 
 the angel proclaimed from heaven, Woe ! woe ! woe ! 
 and Fathers, and Popes, and Earthquake, and Plague, 
 responded amid the smouldering ruins of the empire, 
 Woe ! woe ! woe ! A woe was pronounced from heaven, 
 and humanity recognised in its denunciation the voice 
 of God, and expected it and trembled. Nor was it a 
 small portion or prelibation of the coming woe, that 
 Antichrist was now completely developed. Purgatory, 
 private confession, the worship of relics, the merits and 
 mediation of saints, were now recognised doctrines. The 
 Bishop of Rome assumed the name of " Vicar of Christ," 
 that is, called himself Antichrist, a word which does not 
 mean opposed to Christ, but in the room or place of
 
 76 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Christ. The approach of this Apostacy was worthy of 
 the name of Woe, for never did so colossal a woe oppress 
 the earth, or wear out its inhabitants. What happy 
 hearts has it blighted ! what fair lands has it spoiled of 
 beauty ! what wars has it kindled ! what murders has 
 it committed, yea, and consecrated also, what martyrs 
 has it made, what souls has it slain ! Assuming the name 
 of Christ, it has done the work of Satan ; calling itself 
 Christian, it has perpetrated, under the shadow of that 
 name, the most terrible evils ; pretending to set its 
 affections above the world, it has lived and laboured only 
 to subjugate the world to its ambition. I have seen the 
 eagle rise and soar with out-stretched wing, until he 
 seemed to touch the firmamental ceiling, and bathe his 
 plumage amid sun-shine it seemed as if his heart was 
 set on something beyond the sky, and his eye kindling 
 to catch a vision of it ; but, in reality, his heart and eye 
 were rivetted upon the prey or the quarry that lay be- 
 low ; so has it been with Antichrist he seemed to aim 
 at heaven only to enable him to possess more surely the 
 earth. 
 
 The fifth and sixth trumpets I will postpone to a fu- 
 ture discussion. 
 
 Meantime let us learn from all this, that no one in 
 the history of the earth appears, or speaks, or acts at 
 random. All are under the overruling direction of God. 
 Kings, and emperors, and great captains, and sagacious 
 statesmen, take, as they imagine, their own way, and in 
 the end each is seen to have been the unconscious agent 
 of the purposes of God : the leaf that falls from the 
 tree, and the monarch that is smitten from his throne, 
 the storm that howls amid the mountains, or sweeps 
 the earth, and the tide of war that devastates an empire, 
 are all sent, or suffered, and superintended by God. 
 Cha^e* is the great atheistic monosyllable. It is the 
 atheist's creed, his worship, his god ; but it has no 
 place in the Christian's Bible, and it ought to have none 
 in a Christian's heart. Providence and Revelation equally 
 proscribe it. 
 
 How uncongenial to the world is the gospel of Christ ! 
 Persecution and persuasion have been employed against
 
 THE FOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 77 
 
 it by turns. The bribe of the statesman, and the bayonet 
 of the soldier, have been had recourse to in turns, in 
 order to crush it; but it has risen from every conflict 
 radiant with greater beauty : the hundred hands of infi- 
 delity cannot destroy it ; the branch of the oak may as 
 soon be broken by the wasps that settle on it, or the 
 rock be uprooted by the sea-birds that caw above it, as 
 Christianity be put down by its opponents, or finally 
 and fatally betrayed by its professed friends. The 
 Church may be in dangei*, but Christianity never ; the 
 Chapel may be deserted, but Christ will have a people ; 
 the Minister may become apostate, but Jesus Christ 
 remains the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; the 
 earthen vessel may be broken to shivers, but its precious 
 contents will be unscathed, and its fragrance spread only 
 the wider. 
 
 In sunshine and in storm, by night and by day, 
 through good report and through bad report, the great 
 mission of the gospel has been carried on with various 
 success. Its sacred banner has been borne by saints 
 and martyrs, with the wind and against the wind, from 
 the Jordan to the Tiber, the Thames, the Nile, and the 
 Mississippi. Its glad sound has been lifted up and 
 heard on the sea waves, amid the noise of cataracts, 
 and the tumults of the people ; the communion table 
 has been spread in all places of the earth ; and the 
 baptismal font has been filled from all waters, from the 
 fountains of Nubia, and from the roaring geysers of 
 Northern lands. And, wherever that blessed gospel 
 has been received in simplicity, it has achieved the most 
 beneficent results. It has no sooner laid its consecrat- 
 ing hand upon the pooi', than they have felt unspeakably 
 rich. It has no sooner touched the shackles of the 
 slave, than, disenthralled and unfettered, he has stepped 
 into that freedom with which the truth rnake^ free. 
 Crushed and controverted as it has been at every step, 
 it has dotted the broad earth with holy temples as with 
 stars, and made them the rallying places for the over- 
 burdened hearts and the shattered hopes of the children 
 of men. In spite of fierce opposition, it has been woven 
 into the literature of nations, and into the languages of
 
 78 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the earth. At this day it gives some of its colouring to 
 the conversaziones of coteries, and to the talk of the 
 streets. It still enters palaces with the majesty of a 
 queen, and descends into cottages with the cordiality and 
 kindness of a mother or a sister. It mingles with our 
 griefs, and waits upon our sicknesses. It hallows the 
 ties of marriage, and mitigates the separation and the 
 sorrows of the grave. It is the joy of the good, the 
 strength of the feeble, the hope of the wise, the glory of 
 saints and, blessed be God, it shall know no end ; its 
 " silver cord" never shall be loosed, its "golden bowl" 
 shall never be broken. 
 
 Beneficent as the gospel is, it is painful to learn, 
 that its least victories have been the fruits of tears and 
 suffering. It "came by blood," and by blood it has 
 been perpetuated. But it has been found, as it has been 
 clearly shown in every cycle of its progress, that the 
 truths thus written in blood have been more widely 
 read, as well as more enduring, than if engraven with 
 the point of a diamond on the rocks of every quarter of 
 the globe. From Pope Pharaoh to Pope Pius IX. 
 from the College of Baal to that of the Congregation of 
 Sacred Rites at Rome from the massacre of the inno- 
 cents at Bethlehem to that of St. Bartholomew and the 
 Sicilian Vespers the meek-hearted followers of the 
 Cross have been " sawn asunder," and burned, and en- 
 dured "cruel mockings ;" but all this and incalculably 
 more persecution has failed to arrest its progress. It 
 has rather fanned its hallowed flame. It has blown far 
 and wide the ashes of the martyrs over many a land, 
 there to take root and grow up and bear Cadmean har- 
 vests of yet more holy, more undaunted men. 
 
 Philosophy, with its cobwebs, tried to perplex its 
 witnesses ; and Power, with its weapons, strove to extir- 
 pate them. Vial after vial was poured out upon the meek 
 confessors of the Christian faith, constituting a series of 
 successive persecutions, unparalleled for cruelty in the 
 history of mankind. But the death of the martyr was 
 not the destruction of his creed. On the contrary, his 
 blood fell as dew upon the truth, and made it flourish 
 the more. The air became as the trumpet of jubilee,
 
 THE FOUR FIRST TRUMPETS. 79 
 
 and the winds of heaven as winged angels, wafting the 
 tones of the gospel from sea to sea. Opposition served 
 only to brighten the hallowed lights, or to concentrate 
 their scattered rays into an intenser focus ; rendering 
 more visible, and thereby more glorious, the sainted ones 
 that suffered and more monstrous still the surrounding 
 grim and spectral superstitions of the earth. The gos- 
 pel, in spite of opposition, was eventually throned above 
 the Ca;sars. 
 
 The trees of the forest have fallen, but the Vine 
 brought out of Egypt has been rooted by the tempest. 
 Its branches have been swept by successive storms, and 
 its boughs have been hewn and trodden down by the 
 Cains, and Herods, and Neros, and Hildebrands of the 
 earth ; but, like the Banyan tree, it has only multiplied 
 its roots and spread the more. The philosophical my- 
 thologies of Greece, and the warlike rites of Rome, have 
 passed away ; the priesthood of Levi, and the flamens 
 of Quirinus, have retired from their altars, and the wide 
 earth scarcely renders back one echo of their voices ; 
 but the gospel endures nay, it flourishes, deriving fresh 
 strength from the wrecks of error, and new beauty from 
 the contentions of truth. 
 
 In the worst of times, and in the most terrible apos- 
 tacy, God has a people. In the most unfavourable cir- 
 cumstances, and in the least suspected ages, they are and 
 have been found ; bleak indeed must that desert be in 
 which there is no oasis, and Alpine snows must have 
 more than Alpine cold amid which no floweret blooms ; 
 we may not see them, but God does ; and even we, dim 
 as our vision is, if we will only look below the turbid 
 and agitated surface, shall see a silver stream that flows 
 onward in beauty and in splendour to the main. We 
 see at every stage of the providential dealings of God, 
 punishment seizing on priest and people the moment 
 they apostatize from the gospel of Jesus. We have, in 
 those early instances in the history of Europe, a rehearsal 
 on a greater or smaller scale of the future history of 
 Christendom, we have the lesson writ on ruins, on battle- 
 lields, that it is an evil and a bitter thing to depart from 
 God.
 
 80 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 What a monument of this truth has Britain been ! 
 When the continent of papal Europe was overrun by 
 the ruthless conqueror when its cities were turned into 
 barracks for his troops, and its cathedrals into stables 
 for his cavalry ; when national destruction swept them 
 with its besom, England was spared, like Judah amid 
 the tribes. Pestilence, famine, war, lowered in the far 
 distant horizon, but dared not converge. She alone 
 prospered. Her sun set not. Her renown went forth 
 among the nations. The sword that was invincible 
 every where had no edge when lifted up against her. 
 This was owing to nothing but her Protestantism ; her 
 recognition of the God of truth her grasp of the Bible- 
 her prevailing protest against Popery, were her strength, 
 her glory, her palladium, and her shield. Let us be 
 faithful, even if all around should become apostate let 
 us cleave to truth, even if kings should come down from 
 their thrones to patronize, and prelates from their palaces 
 to consecrate a lie, and when other Alarics and Attilas 
 shall come forth at the bidding of God, to scourge the 
 apostate, either we shall be preserved amid the desola- 
 tion, or, like Augustine, we shall be removed from it to 
 the realms of eternal peace. Our only safety is our 
 highest duty. Faithfulness to truth is our only defence : 
 we are here for this end. To protest against error to 
 stand up for the gospel to spread it at all sacrifice to 
 be pioneers, and thus prepare the way of its progress, if 
 we cannot be missionaries and preachers to be the salt 
 that unobtrusively leavens, if we cannot be the lights 
 that visibly illuminate to have no aim paramount but 
 the glory of God this is Christianity ; this is privilege ; 
 this is peace.
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 
 
 THE SARACENIC WOE. 
 
 " And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven 
 
 unto the earth : and to him was given the key of the bottomless 
 
 pit. 
 " And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out 
 
 of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace ; and the sun and the 
 
 air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 
 " And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and 
 
 unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have 
 
 power. 
 " And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the 
 
 grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree ; 
 
 but only those men who have not the seal of God in their 
 
 foreheads. 
 " And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but 
 
 that they should be tormented five months : and their torment 
 
 was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. 
 " And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; 
 
 and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. 
 " And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared 
 
 unto battle ; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, 
 
 and their faces were as the faces of men. 
 " And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as 
 
 the teeth of lions. 
 " And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and 
 
 the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many 
 
 horses running to battle. 
 " And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in 
 
 their tails : and their power was to hurt men five months. 
 " And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bot- 
 tomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but 
 
 in the Greek tongue, hath his name Apollyon." REV. ix. 1 11. 
 
 THE great body of professing Christendom had be- 
 come more and more almost entirely apostate, its career 
 o
 
 82 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 was retrograde every hour, its corruptions rose to tlin 
 heavens, and the successive Gothic judgments had failed 
 to exert upon the system any purifying power, or upon 
 its agents and emissaries any awakening impression. 
 God, therefore, according to a plan frequently illustrated 
 in the history of his dealing with churches and nations, 
 as may be seen in Amos iv. 6 12, proceeded with other 
 and more startling judgments to smite them yet more 
 severely. 
 
 Accordingly we read in the passage we have quoted, 
 the history of one of the most overwhelming woes that 
 bad yet fallen upon apostate Christendom a woe big 
 with exterminating calamities menaced long, and long 
 disregarded. It descended on the sounding of the 
 fifth trumpet, and may be ascertained by analyzing the 
 peculiar hieroglyphic, or Apocalyptic symbols, used to 
 describe it. 
 
 These symbols, as Mr. Elliott has shown, are inva- 
 riably to be explained on the principle of local, his- 
 torical, or national allusion. This, in fact, is the key 
 to all the symbols of Scripture. The fig tree and the 
 vine, for instance, are the emblems of Judah ; the reed 
 and the crocodile, of Egypt ; the willow denotes Babylon, 
 the wild ass Ishmael, the eagle Edom, and the ship 
 Tyre. It is by following out these precedents of inter- 
 preted symbols already set us in Scripture, that we arrive 
 at a consistent exposition of the symbols used in the 
 Apocalypse. 
 
 The composite character of the locust creature em- 
 ployed in the description of this woe, violating, as it 
 does, all the facts of natural history, shows plainly that 
 it is a symbol, and as such is to be explained. The 
 locust symbol indicates that the invader of the guilty 
 lands, marked out for punishment, would rush forward 
 in countless swarms after the manner of locusts. The 
 horse-like appearance denotes that the invading forces 
 would consist mainly of hordes of cavalry. The lion- 
 likeness intimates their daring and irresistible ferocity, 
 and the scorpion sting, which does not kill the sufferer, 
 indicates the torment they would inflict on those whom
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 83 
 
 they would not be allowed to destroy. The locality 
 from which tkey would come, is plainly shown to be the 
 East. Thus, in Exodus, 10th chap. 13th verse, it is 
 written, " The east wind brought the locusts" into Egypt 
 from Arabia ; and Volney, the sceptic historian, states, 
 that locusts come constantly from the deserts of Arabia. 
 And in Judges, 6th chapter, 5th verse, the name Arbah 
 for a locust is plainly associated with the name Arbi, 
 an Arab, when it is stated that they, the Arabs, came 
 as locusts for multitude. 
 
 Thus, then, by carefully attending to these allusions, 
 we arrive at the conclusion, a conclusion borne out by 
 Scripture usage and unquestionable historic facts, that 
 the invading hordes of cavalry commissioned to execute 
 the judgments of God upon apostate Christendom 
 would come from Arabia ; in fact, one of the emissaries 
 of the woe, the scorpion, is invariably traced in Scripture 
 to Arabia, as when Moses says, " the wilderness," i. e. the 
 Arabian wilderness, " where are fiery serpents and 
 scorpions." The horse is regarded in this, and I believe 
 in every modern country, as peculiarly Arabic. The 
 whole zoology of the symbol is therefore purely Arabian ; 
 but superadded to these nationally characteristic symbols, 
 are certain other features, which more minutely and 
 clearly specify the people and the nation referred to. 
 They are represented to have "faces as men," " the long 
 hair of women," "breastplates," and "crowns" adorned 
 with gold upon their heads ; that is, the courage and the 
 aspect of the man, the effeminacy of the woman, invul- 
 nerability in battle, and continuous victory. That the 
 Goths are not included in this symbol, must be obvious 
 from the fact that the Romans described them as having 
 woman-like faces, from their practice of shaving the 
 upper lip ; that the parties alluded to were neither 
 Greeks nor Romans, is equally apparent from the cir- 
 cumstance that they wore long or woman-like hair, a 
 feature abhorrent, to Greek and Roman customs : we are, 
 therefore, directed to a totally different race, a race too 
 that meets and fulfils the symbol perfectly. Pliny 
 describes the Arabs as wearing the moustache on the 
 G 2
 
 84 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 upper lip, having long hair and crowns, or turbans, on 
 their heads. In the Antar, an Arabic poem, belonging 
 to the age which we are now describing, we have frequent 
 mention of the long hair of the Arabs streaming from 
 beneath their turbans, and the Arabs have a proverb at 
 this day descriptive of themselves. " God has bestowed 
 four things on the Arabs : their turbans for diadems, 
 tents for walls and houses, swords for entrenchments, 
 and poems for laws ; " and the Koran specifies the 
 breastplate as one of God's gifts to the Arabs. 
 
 The Abyss is used in the Old and New Testament 
 Scriptures, to describe the region of the lost, as might 
 be shown by a reference to a variety of texts. The 
 smoke that emanated from it describes some deadly 
 error, or false religion, that should spring from its very 
 depths, and darken the atmosphere of heaven. 
 
 Let us then inquire if at the opening of the seventh 
 century there arose any false system of religion, that, 
 like a smoke from the bottomless abyss, darkened tho 
 light of Christendom ; and if there issued from the midst 
 of this smoke, saturated with its principles, hordes of 
 Arabs who desolated the Roman earth with a new and 
 more terrible woe. In this very century, Mahomet- 
 anism appeared in Arabia ; that terrible smoke which 
 darkens still so large and so beautiful a portion of the 
 earth, a system replete with fanaticism, fraud, sensual- 
 ism, pride ; which crushes wherever it conquers, and has 
 extinguished the energy, the life, the freedom of every 
 country of which it has taken possession. And it was 
 after embracing the tenets and imbibing the spirit of 
 this false superstition, that the Saracen hordes of cavalry 
 issued in propagandist swarms with the fierceness of 
 lions, and the fleetness of horses, and the stings of 
 scorpions upon guilty Christendom ; they were resolved 
 on victory or death ; for in the one case, they anticipated 
 licence upon earth ; and in the other, sensual indulgence 
 as the reward of their exploits in heaven. " The religion 
 of Mahomet," says Hallam, " is essentially a military sys- 
 tem ; the people of Arabia found in the law of their pro- 
 phet, not a licence, but a command to desolate the world."
 
 THE FIFTH TUUMPET. 85 
 
 " The Arabs or Saracens," says Gibbon, " had lan- 
 guished in poverty and contempt till Mahomet breathed 
 into those savage hordes the soul of enthusiasm." 
 Schlegel, who was at once the philosopher and historian, 
 in true apocalyptic terms, called Mahometanism " the 
 infernal spirit," (smoke from the bottomless pit,) " that 
 produced that antichristian combination of spiritual 
 and temporal authority." The two great principles ex- 
 plained in the Koran and embodied in the Mahometan 
 creed, which have always exercised a powerful influence 
 on Mahometans, are predestination or fatalism, and the 
 promise of special sensual enjoyment to those who 
 should fall on the field of battle. To a sensual, and 
 yet daring race, these were resistless stimulants, and, 
 exercised and roused to the very highest pitch of en- 
 thusiasm, they fell upon a race obnoxious to them from 
 their difference of creed, and given up by God on ac- 
 count of their unrepented and unforsaken iniquities. 
 
 What remarkably identifies the symbol in the text 
 with the people to whom we have applied it, is the 
 commission to hurt " only those men which have not the 
 seal of God in their foreheads." Mahomet himself told 
 his followers that their mission was to execute judgment 
 against the idolaters of the earth, and specially against 
 the Christians of the Roman empire, who, by their 
 worship of the Virgin Mary, even in the judgment of 
 Mahomet, had become idolaters. Gibbon also states, 
 that the Christians of the seventh century had " relapsed 
 into the semblance of Paganism, their public and private 
 vows were addressed to images and relics that disgraced 
 the temples of the earth, and the throne of the Almighty 
 was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, saints, and angels, 
 the objects of popular veneration." Thus the sceptic 
 historian attests the apostate character of those the 
 false prophet believed himself commissioned to punish. 
 It was also commanded them, we read, that " they should 
 not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any tree." This 
 was almost verbatim the commission given to the Sara- 
 cens ; for the Caliph, in conformity with the prescrip- 
 tion of the Koran, issued this order, " Destroy no palm
 
 86 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 trees, nor any fields of corn, cut down no fruit trees." 
 And in this respect, the conduct of the Saracens pre- 
 sented a favourable contrast to the practice of the 
 Goths, who invariably destroyed every trace of vegeta- 
 tion, and left what was a garden in their van, a desert 
 in their rear. 
 
 The chief and originator of this system is described, 
 in the commencement of the chapter, as a star fallen 
 from heaven, a symbol which accurately describes the 
 social and political position of Mahomet. A firma- 
 mental star in prophecy denotes a civil or ecclesiastical 
 ruler ; and a fallen firmamental star, a ruler who has 
 been degraded, or in some other way, in person or in 
 his dynasty, has lost his dignity and rank. Mahomet 
 was of a royal house, the descendant of a princely race 
 the governors of Mecca, but on the death of his father 
 and grandfather, he was left a destitute orphan. He 
 was thus a star dropped from the firmament, the place 
 of dignity and lustre, and fallen to the earth, the scene 
 of degradation. 
 
 That a star thus denotes a ruler will be obvious from 
 such passages of Scripture as Numbers xxiv. 17, "There 
 shall come a star out of Jacob;" and Isaiah xiv. 12, 
 " How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the 
 morning!" and in Antar, the ancient Arabic poem, to 
 which allusion has been made already, it is written, 
 " The chiefs were stars in the eyes of the beholders." 
 
 Mr. Elliott, to whom I am so deeply indebted, thus 
 remarks on this application : " Mahomet was by birth 
 of the princely house- of Koreish, governors of Mecca. 
 Originally the principality had been in the hands of the 
 Jorhamites. But one of the Koreish had bought from 
 them the key of the Caaba, and that which went with 
 the key, the principality of Mecca, which from him 
 descended lineally to Mahomet's grandfather, and was 
 in fact in his hands at the time of his grandson's birth. 
 Now this principality and government was one of no 
 small eminence among the Arabs." " Of the many 
 small states into which Arabia was divided at this time, 
 most seemed to have looked up to Mecca," says Hallam,
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 87 
 
 " as the capital of their nation, and chief seat of religious 
 worship." 
 
 Gibbon writes, " The tribe of Koreish, by fraud or 
 force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba. The 
 sacerdotal office devolved, through four lineal descents, 
 to the grandfather of Mahomet ; the family of the 
 Hashamites, whence he sprang, was the most respectable 
 and sacred in the eyes of their country." " Mahomet 
 was educated in the bosom of the noblest race of his 
 country." 
 
 " The grandfather of Mahomet, and his lineal an- 
 cestors," says Gibbon, " appeared in foreign and domestic 
 transactions as the princes of their country." " They 
 were," writes Mr. Elliott, " in the view of the Syrian 
 Greeks, as among the stars in the horizon of the political 
 heaven. But just after his birth his father died, and 
 very soon after his grandfather also, and the governor- 
 ship of Mecca, headship of the tribe, and keys of the 
 Caaba, passed into the hands of another branch of the 
 family. His prospects of greatness seemed all blasted 
 by their deaths. He found himself, so he recounted his 
 own history afterwards, a neglected and destitute or- 
 phan ; though by birth a star in the horizon of the 
 political firmament, he was now, at the opening of the 
 seventh century, a star fallen to the ground, and must 
 so have appeared to the Romans and Syrians, when in 
 the character of servant of the widow Cadijah he 
 came to traffic in the markets of Damascus." It is in 
 referring to this very period of his life, that Mahomet 
 observes, " Cadijah believed in me, when men despised 
 me ; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and per- 
 secuted by the world." 
 
 I have thus fortified, as strongly as possible, this his- 
 torical fact, not because I have any doubt or difficulty 
 about it, but because it has been least attended to, and 
 by some previous interpreters of the Apocalypse it has 
 been utterly misapprehended. Thus drawn from the 
 archives of history, it presents itself as the thing con- 
 templated in Apocalyptic prophecy, and not only solves
 
 88 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 a difficulty, but presents an additional corroborative 
 proof of the minute accuracy of the predictions of the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 Mahomet was no ordinary man. Like Marius amid 
 the marshes of Minturnse, he cherished the most ambitious 
 designs ; he had lost the key of the Caaba, or the holy 
 place of Paganism, but soon received another key of 
 another place from the father of lies. Brooding over his 
 decay, he retired to the cave of Hera, three miles dis- 
 tant from Mecca, and from it, as if from the orifice of 
 the bottomless abyss, he enunciated his mission. He 
 had no sooner done so, than he was denounced and 
 driven from Mecca, by the ruling powers and popular 
 influence, as an impostor, but after "an exile of seven 
 years," says Gibbon, " the fugitive missionary was en- 
 throned as prince and prophet of his native country." 
 It was then that he assumed to have the key of God, 
 and made it to the Islamites what the cross was to the 
 Christians. And as a memorial of the identity of fact 
 with Apocalyptic prediction, the gate of justice of the 
 Moorish Alhambra has a key in alto-relievo on the very 
 centre of its arch, a standing symbol of Mahometanism. 
 The ignominious expulsion or flight of the false prophet 
 from Mecca, is now canonized by Mahometans as the 
 Hegira, from which they date their history, as we date 
 ours from the birth of Christ. 
 
 Mr. Elliott adds, " The very emblem of the key, here 
 figured as given to Mahomet, might almost seem to have 
 been selected in allusive contrast to its counterpart in 
 the Koran. In the latter, the key of God is asserted to 
 have been given to the Prophet ; that which was to 
 open to believers the portals of the true religion and of 
 heaven. Hence it was borne by his followers subse- 
 quently, at least by those of them who achieved the 
 western conquests of Islam, even as the holy cross by 
 Christians, as both a religious and a national emblem, 
 and the sculpture on the proud gate of justice in the 
 Moorish Alhambra still retains and exhibits this symbol. 
 But the Apocalyptic vision more truly represented it as
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 89 
 
 the key of the abyss, and the smoke which rose from the 
 abyss on his opening it as the fumes and the pestilential 
 darkness of hell." 
 
 The Koran itself constantly refers to the key of God, 
 which opened to Mahometans the gates of the world and 
 of religion. " Did not God," it is written in the Koran, 
 "give to his legate the power of heaven which is above, 
 and fire which is beneath ? with the key did he not give 
 him the title and power of a porter, that he may open to 
 those whom he shall have chosen ?" 
 
 Mr. Elliott gives in his first volume an engraving of 
 the arch of the Gate of Justice in the Alhambra, with 
 the key on the key-stone. Here again we have fresh 
 evidence of the microscopic accuracy of the Apocalypse. 
 Facts occur as if just to explain it. Men act as if they 
 meant to fill up its magnificent outline, and the Koran of 
 the Moslem and the pen of the sceptic turn commenta- 
 tors on the book which neither of them believe. 
 
 At this very age, then, we find that a vast body of 
 Saracens, inspired by the dogmas of Mahomet, burst 
 upon Western Christendom, and inflicted on its guilty 
 people the most desolating judgments ; and we shall see, 
 by an impartial reference to their history, the completes! 
 evidence of the fulfilment of the Apocalyptic prediction. 
 In the year 629, the Saracens first issued from the 
 desert ; and in A. D. 636, they came down upon Damas- 
 cus and Jerusalem, like a resistless and overflowing tor- 
 rent ; and before A. D. 637, a Mahometan mosque was 
 built upon the very site of the ancient temple of Solomon, 
 and the cry of the Muezzim was heard where the voice 
 of inspiration had been uttered before the Crescent 
 waved victorious over Egypt, Spain, Persia, and India. 
 In ten years, that is, from A. D. 634 to A. D. 644, the 
 Saracens reduced 3060 cities, destroyed 4000 churches, 
 and raised 1400 mosques ; and, as if to show how truly 
 the punishment they inflicted was as the torment of a 
 scorpion when he striketh a man, and that " in those 
 days shall men seek death and shall not find it, and shall 
 desire to die and death shall flee from them," the Chris- 
 tians they spared were tormented with the most cruel
 
 90 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 and protracted oppression, their rites were mocked at, 
 their worship degraded, their persons assailed, and in- 
 sults, without ceasing, were heaped upon their churches, 
 and the common language addressed to them was, " Ye 
 Christian dogs, ye know your option the Koran, the 
 tribute, or the sword ! " 
 
 " The bitter contempt and hatred flowing out from the 
 Moslem faith towards them could not but be felt per- 
 petually. It was marked in the very terms of appel- 
 lation, Christian dogs and infidels. The enactments of 
 the capitulations granted them were then every day re- 
 membrances of it. Deprived of the use of arms, like the 
 Helots of old, and with tribute enforced as their annual 
 life redemption tax with a different dress enjoined 
 them from their masters, and a more humble mode of 
 riding an obligation to rise up deferentially in the 
 presence of the meanest Moslem, and to receive and gra- 
 tuitously entertain, for a certain time, whosoever of the 
 Moslems, when on a journey, might require it such 
 were the marks of personal degradation ordained in the 
 capitulations. And then, in token of the degradation of 
 their religion, that to which, notwithstanding all their 
 superstitions, they clung with fond attachment, there 
 was the prohibition to build new churches, or to chime 
 the bells in those retained by them, or to refuse the ad- 
 mission of the scoffing Moslem into them, though they 
 regarded his presence as defilement. Add to this, the 
 inducements to apostacy to Mahometanism, operating to 
 an incalculable extent on the young and thoughtless in 
 families more especially, and then the penalty of death 
 against those returning to the Christian faith the in- 
 sults, moreover, to Christian females, and a thousand in- 
 definable injuries and oppressions ; and how could it be 
 but that the bitterness of their lot should be felt, and 
 the poison rankle within them, even as it was in other 
 days with the Jewish captives in Babylon ? 'And in 
 those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, 
 and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them : ' 
 as it is said of the Jews in Jeremiah viii. 3, ' And 
 death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 91 
 
 of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in 
 all the places whither I have driven them.'" 
 
 It is next stated, that they had a king over them, a 
 characteristic which seems to denote that they never re- 
 nounced, in the countries they invaded, their allegiance 
 to him who gave them their religion, and their laws : 
 this was fulfilled, in fact, and constitutes a peculiar 
 feature of Mahometan conquests. The Goths and 
 Vandals left their own religion behind them, and em- 
 braced the principles, and practised the worship, of the 
 country they invaded ; but the Saracens carried with 
 them the Koran, the embodied spirit of their prophet 
 and king, and having destroyed all the existing laws 
 and usages of the conquered, they substituted their own, 
 and insisted on their universal and unqualified observance. 
 So minute is the prediction ! So true to it is the his- 
 tory ! 
 
 There was, however, a limit to the action of this woe. 
 It was sent, as the imagery of the fifth trumpet plainly 
 implies, not to annihilate, but to " torment" the apostate 
 Christians of the Roman empire ; hence, wheresoever 
 the Saracens attempted to exceed the limits of their 
 mission, they were foiled a restraining and coercive 
 power, unseen, but felt, kept them back. Gibbon, ever 
 the impartial but undesigned commentator on the Apo- 
 calypse, makes the remark : " The calm historian must 
 study to explain by what means the Church and the 
 State were saved from this impending and inevitable 
 danger;" and Hallam observes, "These conquests are 
 less perplexing than their cessation." The solution of 
 the otherwise inexplicable mystery is, that God, who 
 sent them to inflict the judgment, had limited alike the 
 time and the place of its operation : twice they tried to 
 destroy Constantinople, and twice they failed ; once 
 they made an incursion into France, and if it had fallen 
 before their arms, Europe had fallen also ; and, humanly 
 speaking, the mosque would now have occupied in Eng- 
 land the site of the Christian temple, and the Dervish of 
 the East the place of the Tractarian of the West. The 
 Franks, however, under Charles Martel, called " the
 
 92 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Hammer," repulsed them ; and, says the historian, 
 Europe owes its existence, its religion, and its liberty, 
 to his victory. We shall see, also, that not only the 
 range, but the period of the duration of this woe is dis- 
 tinctly fixed in the Apocalypse. They were to torment 
 for five months, that is, 150 prophetic days, or 150 
 literal years. Let us now see if the chronology of history 
 sustains the prediction in the Apocalypse. In 612, 
 Mahomet first proclaimed his mission : " Who," said he, 
 " will be my Vizier ?" Ali replied : " Oh ! Prophet, I 
 am the man ! Whoever rises against thee, I will dash 
 out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, and rip him 
 up ! " This date was, therefore, the commencement of the 
 Saracenic invasion. After Mahomet had thus appointed 
 one to begin that terrible course of ruthless and inexorable 
 proselytism, which imparted to that system its temporary 
 success, and after the conquests and occasional repulses, 
 which we have described, the dynasty of the Ommiades 
 was supplanted in the Caliphate by the dynasty of Abas- 
 sides, in 755 ; and the Caliphate, heretofore so powerful, 
 from its unity, was rent in twain, and the dynasty of 
 the East became the antagonist of that of the West. 
 Another capital, Medinat al Salem, or the City of Peace, 
 further eastward of Christendom, was selected, A. D. 762, 
 and there the turbaned locusts settled. " The Colossus," 
 says Sismondi, " that had bestridden the whole South, 
 was broken ; and this revolution did more for the de- 
 liverance of Europe from the Mussulman arms than 
 even the battle of Poictiers." "War," says Gibbon, 
 " was now no longer the passion of the Saracens there 
 the luxury of the Caliphs relaxed the nerves, and termi- 
 nated the progress of the Arabian empire." 
 
 " Thus, then, far east in Bagdad," writes Mr. Elliott, 
 " after a brief temporary splendour and revival into 
 military enterprise and success, from 781 to 805, under 
 the reigns of Mohadi and Haroun Al Rashed, we must 
 think of the once terrible power of the Saracens as 
 declined and declining, luxury and licentiousness work- 
 ing their usual sure process of decay with both prince 
 and people, and the fervour of religious fanaticism passed
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 93 
 
 away. At length, in the year 841, the reigning Caliph, 
 distrusting the martial spirit of his Arabs, hired a 
 band of 50,000 Turkmans from beyond the Oxus to 
 be the support of the Caliphate at Bagdad ; and these, 
 acting precisely the same part as the Roman Praetorian 
 guards before them, revolted against, insulted, humili- 
 ated, and deposed the Caliph, and so, in this case too, 
 became a further and powerful accelerating cause of their 
 sovereign's downfal. At length, as the tenth century 
 opened, the Fatimites, descendants of that Ali, Ma- 
 homet's first vizier, of whom we have spoken, and 
 of his wife, Fatima, Mahomet's favourite daughter, as- 
 serted their rightful claims not to independent political 
 sovereignty only, but even to the Caliphate itself. In 
 the prosecution of this claim, they reduced Africa, Egypt, 
 and Syria, and from Cairo, as their capital, became 
 known as the third Caliphate of Islamism ; thus more 
 and more dismembered, the Abassidean Caliphate at 
 Bagdad more and more languished, until the Persian 
 independent Moslem dynasty of the Bowides, interposing 
 on occasion of the factions then prevalent, advanced to 
 Bagdad in the year 934, stripped the Caliph of his secular 
 office and supremacy, and reduced him to his spiritual 
 functions as chief Pontiff of Islamism, the mere phantom 
 thenceforward of departed power." Thus we have 
 clearly marked the rise and fall of this power. 
 
 From A. D. 612, the date of its rise, to A. D. 762, the 
 date of its decay, is a period of 150 years, or precisely 
 the five prophetic months, or five times thirty prophetic 
 days, that is, literal years, of the Apocalypse. These 
 striking coincidences are surely not accidental. Gibbon 
 had his mission, and that mission an important one. He 
 is the reluctant commentator on the Apocalypse the 
 register of its prophecies fulfilled the lasting evidence 
 that God's word, which he denounced as false, is true. 
 
 These coincidences are so remarkable from first to 
 last, that we cannot fail to recognise in them new 
 evidence of the inspiration of Scripture, new proofs of 
 the divinity of its predictions and the unity of God's 
 plans. The historic keys, presented by the infidel his-
 
 94 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 torian, so exactly fit the prophetic wards, as described 
 in the Apocalypse, that we are compelled to infer con- 
 nexion, adaptation, and design. The pen of truth records 
 the prediction, and the finger of Providence translates 
 it into fact ; and the sceptic, ignorant of the one, but 
 struck by the startling magnificence of the other, writes 
 it down on the lasting tablets of history ; and thus, 
 were we to be asked to select the most impressive witness 
 to the truth and reality of the text, " Holy men of old 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," we 
 would select Volney, as the evidence of the inspiration 
 of Isaiah, and Gibbon, as the best evidence of the inspir- 
 ation of the Apocalypse. 
 
 The same God, we also learn, who is revealed in the 
 Bible, is felt in providence, and heard and seen in 
 history. The shortest text, and the longest chapter, 
 the most precious- promise, and the most startling threat- 
 ening, in the Bible, are alike inspired by God. So in 
 the history of the world, the minutest incident, and the 
 most momentous revolution the sparrow's flight, and 
 the angel's worship, are alike under the cognizance, 
 subject to the control, and associated with the ultimate 
 purposes of God. All the action of Providence, not- 
 withstanding its apparent antagonism, is really the 
 continuous carrying out of the plans, predictions, and 
 purposes of God. God pronounced the character of the 
 future, and promotes what he has predicted without 
 ceasing. 
 
 The little flock, the Church of Christ, we see has out- 
 lived all trials, and survived all shocks, and has given 
 evidence at every stage of its history and development, 
 that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. The 
 church may be in danger, the chapel may be deserted, 
 the ministers of both may become apostate, but the 
 everlasting gospel survives, makes the tomb of all the 
 platform on which it concentrates its force, that it may 
 rise and soar with the speed and splendour of an angel's 
 wing. Christ remains the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever. His church shares in his glory. Let us always 
 distinguish between the truth of Christ and the smoke
 
 THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 95 
 
 that darkens it, or the aposfacy that overlays it the 
 one goes, the other abides. The inexperienced eye, see- 
 ing the drift resting on the mountain top, concludes that 
 it is part of the mountain itself ; and when the wind 
 sweeps the drift away, the unpractised spectator is apt 
 to imagine that part of the mountain is gone but it is 
 not so ; it still stands to attract from the clouds that 
 sweep over it the blessings which they bear, and to send 
 them down its sides to refresh and moisten the drooping 
 heath-bell, and to form streams which gladden, as they 
 go, a thousand valleys, and sweep onward to the main. 
 Thus superstitions, and apostacies, and errors, and con- 
 troversies rage within and without, and all around the 
 sides of the mountain of the Lord's house, and dart their 
 lightnings, and emit their thunders, but they do not 
 make nor unmake the mountain ; its glorious summit 
 rises high above the tumult, and burns with perpetual 
 sunshine, and all night long is visited by troops of stars. 
 Heaven and earth may pass away ; the grass may 
 wither, and the flower may fade ; but the word of the 
 Lord endureth for ever : and this is the word which by 
 the gospel is preached unto you. 
 
 In conclusion, let me ask all of you, are ye members 
 of this, the only true Church ? Have you any part in the 
 blood of the eternal Covenant ? Are you united to 
 Christ ? Have you any share in that blessed gospel 
 which is adapted to the ignorance of man, illuminating 
 it, to the guilt of man, expiating it, to the alienation of 
 man, removing it ? " Be ye reconciled unto God," is its 
 bidding. " God so loved the world, that he gave his 
 only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him 
 might not perish, but have everlasting life," is its blessed 
 revelation. " He that believeth not the Son, shall not 
 see life, but the wrath of God abideth upon him," is its 
 solemn reiterated warning. To be ignorant of the 
 meaning and the mysteries of the Apocalypse, is to be 
 without the enjoyment of a great privilege ; but to have 
 no interest in Christ, no experience of the efficacy of his 
 atoning sacrifice, is to have no real peace upon earth, no
 
 96 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 sure prospect of happiness in heaven ; but, on the con- 
 trary, a fearful looking for of fiery indignation. " See 
 then that ye refuse not him that speaketh ; for if they 
 escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much 
 more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him 
 that speaketh from heaven."
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET, 
 
 OR 
 THE TURKISH WOE. 
 
 " One woe is past ; and, behold, there come two woes more 
 
 hereafter. 
 " And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four 
 
 horns of die golden altar which is before God, 
 " Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four 
 
 angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. 
 " And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an 
 
 hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third 
 
 part of men. 
 " And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred 
 
 thousand thousand : and I heard the number of them. 
 " And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on 
 
 them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone : 
 
 and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions ; and out 
 
 of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. 
 " By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and 
 
 by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their 
 
 mouths. 
 " For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails : for their 
 
 tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they 
 
 do hurt. 
 " 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 fornication, nor of their thefts." REV. ix. 12 21. 
 
 I MUST, in the present instance, be allowed again to 
 express a sentiment Avhich I have endeavoured before to 
 inculcate, viz. that there must be drawn a broad and 
 palpable line between those great evangelical truths 
 which are clearly and plainly revealed to us, and those 
 views of prophecy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, which are sub- 
 jects of a probability more or less high. I wish you
 
 98 APOCALYl'TIC SKETCHES. 
 
 clearly to understand, that when I tell you there are ac- 
 ceptance and forgiveness in the name of Christ only, I 
 enunciate a proposition which is far above the region of 
 dispute ; but when I express an opinion that the seals 
 describe the Roman empire, or that the four first 
 trumpets describe the Gothic eruption, or that the fifth 
 trumpet is the epitome of the Saracenic woe, or that the 
 sixth is the history of the Turkish woe or invasion, I 
 convey views about which good men have differed in 
 times past, on which Christians may still differ, but re- 
 specting which it appears to me to be the duty of the 
 minister of Christ to give, at least, the result of his own 
 researches, or the expression of his own sober mind. You 
 will, therefore, bear in mind that my views of prophecy 
 may be erroneous, but my expositions of the great tenets 
 of the gospel are true as God's word and lasting as his 
 throne. My exposition of the Apocalypse may be dis- 
 puted, and I beg of you to canvass it, if you will do so, 
 in a Christian spirit, and as becometh the gospel of 
 Christ ; but my convictions of evangelical and Bible re- 
 ligion I hold are so clearly and so plainly unfolded in the 
 pages of the word of God, that he who doubts is lost, 
 and he who hears and receives may rejoice in hope of 
 everlasting glory. 
 
 In my last lecture I explained the fifth trumpet, and 
 endeavoured to identify the Arabs of history with the 
 locust symbols which are here so minutely described. 
 I expressed my conviction that the fifth trumpet describes 
 the judgments executed on apostate Christendom by the 
 irruption of the Saracens. I showed you the striking 
 identity between the Apocalyptic symbols used and the 
 facts of history as recorded. Mahomet I identified with 
 the star fallen from heaven. A star is the symbol of a 
 prince, a ruler, or a king ; a fallen firmamental star, a 
 discrowned ruler. Thus Mahomet was of royal ancestry 
 of the royal but decayed house of Mecca, a prince 
 without a sceptre a monarch without a throne. He was 
 thus a fallen firmamental star. To him was given a key 
 a key he thought to open heaven, but God says to 
 unlock the bottomless pit. In this we have another evi- 
 dence of the complete identity between the facts of
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPETS. 99 
 
 history and the symbols of the Apocalypse : a key is 
 one of the great characteristic ensigns of Mahometanism ; 
 so much so, that on the principal arch of the court of 
 justice, called the Alhambra, there is the figure of a key 
 in alto relievo, as the great symbol or characteristic mark 
 of the Moor to this very day. I explained how Maho- 
 metanism being likened to the smoke of a great furnace 
 darkening the sun, coming up out of the pit ; and the 
 Mahometans or Saracens, who embraced his system, 
 being likened to locusts overspreading the whole earth ; 
 I showed you that the symbol is plainly Arabic : when 
 we speak of the rose, we refer to England ; or of the 
 thistle, we refer to Scotland ; so in the Apocalypse, when 
 symbols are used they have some national or character- 
 istic allusion. The locust is used, as I showed you, 
 to describe the Arab, and as this reference denotes that 
 like locusts they will come in swarms, so when we refer 
 to history, we find that such was the fact. Then " it 
 was commanded them that they should not touch the 
 grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any 
 tree." There is a precept of Mahomet in the Koran and 
 an express order of the Caliph, that they, the Saracens, 
 should not touch grass, nor green trees, nor any thing 
 of the kind. The Goths left what was the garden of the 
 Lord before them, a desolate wilderness behind them ; 
 but the Mahometans, wherever they invaded, left the 
 green things undismantled, and the green trees unde- 
 stroyed. I then referred to the crown on their head, 
 which seems to signify the turban which was worn by the 
 Arabs. I also referred to the fact, that " they had hair as 
 the hair of women ;" it is still the characteristic of the 
 Arabs, the long black hair hanging down upon their 
 shoulders ; and I cited instances to show, that there is a 
 national characteristic to explain that they had faces as 
 the faces of men. Now the Goths were noted, and up- 
 braided by the Romans, for having faces of women, be- 
 cause they removed the hair from the upper lip ; the 
 Arabs are recorded in history as having the faces of 
 men, from their retaining it ; which was regarded as the 
 symbol of manliness. 
 
 I now enter upon the passage I have selected for this 
 H 2
 
 100 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 evening's exposition, viz. the sounding of the sixtli 
 trumpet, or what is called the second woe. 
 
 First of all, you will notice that a voice came " from 
 the four corners of the golden altar that is before God, 
 saying to the sixth angel, Loose the four angels which 
 are bound in the great river Euphrates." Now you can- 
 not have forgotten what I explained on a previous occa- 
 sion, that where there is a voice emitted, or a scene wit- 
 nessed of this description in the Apocalyptic firmament, 
 we find it has an allusive reference to a corresponding 
 but contrasting scene just then actualized on earth. The 
 truth that is proclaimed from heaven indicates the cor- 
 relative error contemporaneously held on earth. The 
 doctrine that is inculcated above is thus allusively an em- 
 phatic protest against the heresy taught below. A voice 
 is heard on this occasion proceeding from the horns of 
 the golden altar. Who alone, let me ask, had a right to 
 be there ? The high priest alone, in the Jewish dis- 
 pensation, and only once a year ; and so our High Priest, 
 the Great Antitype, is there for ever, to make interces- 
 sion for us. The doctrine, therefore, here taught in the 
 Apocalyptic heaven, is the atoning sacrifice on earth and 
 priestly intercession of Christ before the throne in heaven, 
 and this is the great doctrine, therefore, to which there 
 is here conveyed allusion, as being explained away, 
 merged, or corrupted in the visible church. We have an 
 illustrative instance of this allusive reference in such a 
 passage as this : " The voice of thy brother's blood 
 crieth unto me from the ground : " that is, the cry of the 
 innocent involves and silently utters the crime of the 
 guilty. We therefore presume, from this disclosure, 
 that at this period Christendom increased in its apos- 
 tacy from this vital truth that it still continued to 
 corrupt, beyond all other doctrines, the great doctrine 
 of the atonement, and of the priestly intercession of the 
 Son of God, by errors grafted on them. This was the 
 sin of the church, and therefore the corresponding judg- 
 ment is sent, and is thus described. 
 
 The moment that the sixth trumpet sounded, we 
 are told that the four angels were loosed from the 
 Euphrates. Now these four angels are referred to in
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 101 
 
 chapter seven as the tempest-restraining angels. The 
 judgments which they were commissioned to execute 
 had been going on under the previous symbols. But at 
 Bagdad on the Euphrates, these ceased, for there the 
 Saracenic empire was rent in twain, and the conquests 
 of the Moors ceased ; and there, consequently, the angels 
 paused in their dread work and were bound. A com- 
 mission was given to those four angels to arise from this 
 spot where they were bound, and to let loose a new judg- 
 ment. Do we then find at that period in our Apocalyptic 
 chronology at Avhich we are arrived, after the Saracens 
 had passed away, and the Crescent had ceased for a while 
 to be dominant, and Christendom had experienced a 
 momentary, pause in its torments, that there was any 
 fresh invasion of Christendom after this respite ? any 
 facts, in short, embodied in the historic page which coin- 
 cide with the symbols made use of in the Apocalypse ? 
 I think we do. The invasion thus set forth was that of 
 the Turks. Togrul Beg was declared to be head of the 
 Turkish empire, and the protector and governor of 
 Mecca. He forthwith declared war against Christendom 
 in other words, the instant the sixth trumpet sounded 
 the four angels were let loose, and judgments immediately 
 followed. The Turks, we are told, invaded Christendom, 
 and commenced a war against it, under Alp Arslan, 
 called the valiant Lion. He crossed the Euphrates in 
 the year 1063, at the head of immense masses of Turkish 
 cavalry. He carried victory in his van and havoc and 
 destruction in his rear. He encompassed Constantinople. 
 It did not fall, because its day was not yet come, but its 
 monarch, Alexius, felt his weakness, trembled on his 
 throne, and called upon the Christian nations of the West 
 to join with him to repel the invaders. We read that it 
 was only the crusades, which occupied the whole atten- 
 tion of Christendom, that as providential means pre- 
 vented the ruin of Constantinople, which was the queen 
 and mistress of the East, as, previous to her fall, Rome 
 had been the mistress of the Western empire. Though 
 the Turks failed in this, they profitably employed the 
 interval in recruiting and consolidating their power. 
 Hence at the end of the 14th century, after the crusades
 
 102 
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 and all their glory had passed away, we read that the 
 Turks, thus recruited, again crossed the Danube, and 
 fell on Constantinople ; and Gibbon, the historian, makes 
 the remark, that for the first time in the history of Eu- 
 rope, " Constantinople was surrounded both on the 
 Asiatic and the European side," by the forces of the 
 Turks, led by the Sultan Hunkiar, whose name in the 
 Turkish language is, literally, the slayer of men ; as if 
 to describe his mission to be " to slay the third part of 
 men," as it is declared and defined in the Apocalypse. 
 Mark the expression, too, which is here used, " the 
 number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred 
 thousand thousand." Now you will recollect the Gothic 
 forces consisted chiefly of infantry, but it was the great 
 military characteristic of the Turks that their main force 
 consisted of cavalry. It is said, by Gibbon himself, that 
 at this time myriads of Turkish horse crossed the Da- 
 nube, and swept and overspread the whole length and 
 breadth of the Grecian empire. It is added here, by St. 
 John, " I heard the number of them." Now whenever 
 an expression of this kind is used in the Apocalypse, it 
 means that some public testimony was emitted ; and in 
 this case it intimates that there was some public declar- 
 ation of the vast number of the invading forces. Ac- 
 cordingly we read, that not only Peter the Hermit, but 
 the patriarch of Jerusalem, trembling for the safety of 
 the sacred capital and its illustrious remains, sent a peti- 
 tion through western Europe, imploring and entreat- 
 ing its princes to send forces to his aid : " for," said he, 
 " we call for help : the forces of the Turks are more nu- 
 merous than the forces of the Saracens : they already de- 
 vour the whole world by anticipation." 
 
 In order still further to identify the historic illustra- 
 tions that I have referred to, let us notice what is said in 
 verse 17. It is there stated : " I saw the horses in the 
 vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of 
 fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone : and the heads of the 
 horses were as the heads of lions ; and out of their mouths 
 issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three 
 was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the 
 smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 103 
 
 mouths." These symbols long perplexed commentators 
 upon the Apocalypse. It was difficult to determine what 
 was their meaning. It is, however, ascertained to be a 
 symbol which, like every other symbol of the sacred book, 
 has its fixed and definite historic meaning. Now I do 
 not assert that the exposition I give is infallible and be- 
 yond dispute ; but I do assert that the coincidence be- 
 tween the fact I am now about to state, and the symbol 
 that is employed, is so vivid and remarkable, that there 
 is the best possible ground for the assumption that it is 
 the solution of the difficulty. The symbols here em- 
 ployed, are fire and smoke and brimstone, and these are 
 specified as the Turkman's weapons of destruction. Now 
 the period at which we have arrived, as I have told you, 
 is the close of the 14th and the commencement of the 
 15th century. The symbol we are opening up is that of 
 the Turkish irruption on apostate Christendom, in order 
 to punish it for its sins, and to execute the determined 
 judgments of God. Was there any thing newer peculiar 
 in the arms they employed ? was any new implement 
 introduced by them into the warfare ? have we, in con- 
 temporaneous history, any one fact that, in the least de- 
 gree, seems to correspond with the characteristic terms 
 used on this occasion ? Let us consult history. We read 
 that in the siege of Constantinople, the last stronghold of 
 apostate Christendom, the fall of which was the most 
 dreadful calamity to the East, as the fall of Rome was 
 the most disastrous to the West, new elements of destruc- 
 tion were recently introduced in war that gunpowder 
 and cannon were employed ; and it was only by their 
 instrumentality that this illustrious city was reduced to 
 ruins. At all events, this is the first Apocalyptic scene 
 at which this new invention could be specified. Gun- 
 powder is assigned traditionally a very early date, but 
 really it was only recently introduced into war, and em- 
 ployed to batter down cities and fortifications. The 
 Sultan, on this occasion, hearing that a founder of cannon 
 had deserted from the enemy, put the question to him, 
 " Canst thou found a cannon large enough to batter down 
 the walls of Constantinople?" and in the course of a 
 few months a whole park of artillery were pouring death
 
 104 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 and destruction on the devoted walls of that illustrious 
 eastern capital. And so much did this fact strike Gib- 
 bon, (and Gibbon, I have told you, was not the least de- 
 sirous of explaining the Apocalypse, for he did not believe 
 the Gospels, much less the Apocalypse ; indeed I am 
 doubtful if he ever believed in any thing but the great- 
 ness of his own genius, or cared for aught but the flattery 
 and incense which he required to be offered to it,) that 
 he states, in his history of the siege of Constantinople 
 after giving an account of that mysterious mixture of 
 saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal that " fortifications that 
 had stood for ages against the Goth, the Hun, the 
 Vandal, and the Saracen, now fell before the mighty 
 power of cannon." Constantinople fell amid the groans 
 of the Christian and the shouts of the Moslem, and the 
 Empire of the East set never again to rise. Now I do 
 not say that this is an infallible exposition of the Apoca- 
 lyptic statement. But I do say that at the period of 
 historic narrative at which we have arrived, and with 
 consistency arrived, there is such a minute coincidence 
 between the historic fact and the Apocalyptic symbol, 
 taking into consideration the chronology of that event 
 as the consistent chronology of the Apocalypse, that we 
 cannot resist the conclusion, that the invasion of the 
 Turks was the woe that immediately followed the sound- 
 ing of the sixth trumpet. 
 
 In order still more fully to identify this historical fact 
 with the symbol, I must direct your attention to another 
 allusion contained in verse 19, "For their power is in 
 their tails : for their tails were like unto serpents, and had 
 heads, and with them do they hurt." The same expres- 
 sion is used of the Saracens, who embraced the same 
 religion namely, Mahometanism, that their power 
 (eou<7/a, jurisdiction, authority) was in their tails. Now 
 this has long been regarded as an all but inexplicable 
 symbol, and has greatly embarrassed many commentators 
 on the Apocalypse. A crown is the symbol of a con- 
 quering monarch this symbol we can easily understand. 
 A diadem is the symbol and seal of a peaceful monarch 
 and this also we can understand. A sword, as we saw 
 before under one of the seals, is the express symbol of a
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 105 
 
 military prefect this is perfectly natural. The balance, 
 as we also saw under another seal, is the symbol of an 
 administrator of j'ustice : but the tail and not the tail 
 of the majestic lion, but of the Arab horse what can this 
 be the symbol of? how can we explain it ? The solution 
 has been found. It is recorded in history that one of 
 the Turkish chiefs had lost his standard in the battle, 
 and that on discovering his loss he cut off the tail of the 
 horse on which he rode, mounted it on a pole, and an- 
 nounced to the Turks that it was to be the standard of 
 their nation, and round it thenceforth they rallied to the 
 havoc and to victory. From that moment the horse's 
 tail became the most distinctive official symbol of the 
 Turks ; so much so, that at the present day it is the very 
 word for honour and power : the number of tails a Turk 
 has is the expression of the amount of official power to 
 which he is raised. A Pasha of one tail is of the lowest 
 rank of two tails higher and a Pasha of three tails is 
 a still higher rank. The fact fulfils the prophecy. The 
 coincidence between this feature in Turkish history and 
 the Apocalyptic symbol is striking. It is so startling, so 
 unexpected, as to afford the strongest possible presump- 
 tion, that the symbol of which I am speaking is fulfilled 
 and explained by the historic facts I have now quoted. 
 
 It is added, in the next place, and "with these they do 
 hurt." Here our translation is at fault ; the word trans- 
 lated " hurt " is aSiKovat, and its meaning is not so much 
 to hurt in the sense of inflicting pain on the body ; but 
 to deal unjustly, to act unjustly not to rule righteously 
 not to distribute even-handed justice to others. I need 
 not quote the proverbial tyranny of Sultans, I need not 
 refer to the barbaric proscriptions of their Pashas ; tra- 
 vellers fail fully to enumerate the cruelties and oppres- 
 sions endured by those under their yoke ; and inflicted 
 for no other reason than that the former have power, and 
 the latter profess a different religion. The meaning is 
 plain, this " tail " is the exponent of Turkish rule, and as 
 such is the symbol of injustice, instead of being, like the 
 rose of England, the symbol of justice, impartiality, and 
 truth. 
 
 We have also stated here the period during which
 
 106 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 this woe was to last. It is said, they " were prepared 
 for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year," that is 
 to say, from the period when the Turks departed from 
 Bagdad on the Euphrates, crossed that river, and subse- 
 quently the Danube, to the time when the last groans of 
 the Christians of Constantinople mingled with the expir- 
 ing echoes of the sixth Apocalyptic trumpet. The whole 
 period, from the going forth of the Turks at Bagdad to 
 the fall of Constantinople, includes the Apocalyptic period 
 expressed in the Avords, an hour, a day, a month, and a 
 year. Now it has been clearly established, and indeed 
 can be proved, as I shall hereafter show you in these 
 lectures, from a reference to Daniel, and other no less 
 conclusive evidence, that a prophetic year may be taken 
 at 365 prophetic days, or literal years. The prophetic 
 month is 30 prophetic days, or 30 literal years ; a pro- 
 phetic day is one literal year. And thus a day in the 
 Apocalypse means a year ; a year signifies 365^ such 
 prophetic days, or literal years. And using this explan- 
 ation, you will find that the hour, the day, the month, 
 and the year, are thus exactly met ; and, within a day, 
 describe the period which extends from the time when 
 the Turkish forces left Bagdad on the Euphrates, till the 
 time that Constantinople fell, and all the grandeur of the 
 East set in gloom and darkness, which has not yet been 
 dissipated. We find 365 \ years + a month or 30 years 
 -J- a day or 1 year -f- an hour or 15 days, make 396 years 
 and 106 days. Now the time when the Turks left Bag- 
 dad, was A. D. 1057 ; the time when Constantinople fell 
 under their arms, was A. D. 1453 ; the former period com- 
 mencing January 18th, and the latter period ending on 
 May the 29th, that is, 396 years and 106 days : the dates 
 thus recorded in history correspond precisely with the 
 prophetic period which we have here specified in the 
 Apocalypse. And it is thus more decisive evidence that 
 our identification of the sixth trumpet with the Turkish 
 invasion and the fall of Constantinople, is a great and 
 all but indubitable fact. 
 
 The two capitals of Christendom had fallen : the 
 church in each had become apostate : churches as cor- 
 porate bodies cease to exist in eternity, and therefore
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 107 
 
 they are rewarded or punished upon earth. If there be 
 one fact more striking than another in the history of the 
 past, it is this, that whenever a nation lias patronized the 
 great Western apostacy, it has been j udged, and invaded, 
 and punished as it is recorded in the Apocalypse. I 
 should look upon it, my dear friends, as a less ominous 
 symptom of national ruin, that a nation should persecute 
 the truth, than that it should patronize the superstitions 
 of Rome. The first would only stir up the Christians 
 that remain to the crisis consecrate their energies, and 
 excite them to a more spiritual confidence in their prin- 
 ciples their heavenly patronage their Bible promises 
 but the last would not only corrupt or divide, but 
 would draw down the judgments of God upon them that 
 thus apostatized from Him. 
 
 I have now to refer to the effects of these judgments 
 on the apostacy during the middle ages. 
 
 I have on previous occasions referred to a work in which 
 the author holds, that the ages that I have pronounced 
 to be those of accumulating and unrepented superstition 
 were the ages of Faith. The author makes this state- 
 ment : one of the most learned and able of the Fathers 
 flourished in the 12th century; and he argues that the 
 age which produced such a man as Bernard, could not 
 be a dark or a barbarous one. Suppose that Bernard 
 was all that he describes him to have been that he was 
 most eloquent and most devoted that he was, notwith- 
 standing his superstition, an intellectual phenomenon 
 suppose he was all that his eloquent advocate describes 
 him to be ; must we conclude as he argues, that those 
 ages that gave birth to such a man cannot have been 
 dark ones. Might we not turn round upon such a rea- 
 soner and say, if, because the middle ages gave birth to 
 St. Bernard, we are to conclude that they were ages of 
 faith and light, surely the age that originated a Milton 
 must be pre-eminently excellent, and worthy of all 
 praise ? Yet if you ask a churchman, such and so high 
 as the author of this reasoning is, what was the charac- 
 teristic of the age from which John Milton sprung, you 
 will find by his description of it that he must either praise
 
 108 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the Puritans, or cease to have confidence in his own 
 reasoning. 
 
 It is also argued that all the most beautiful cathedrals 
 originated in these ages ; and that the ages which pro- 
 duced such magnificent buildings could not have been 
 either barbarous or dark. Canterbury was built in 1023 ; 
 York Minster in 1193; Winchester in 1099; Lincoln 
 cathedral in 1188: the argument is, that if such monu- 
 ments as these appeared in those ages, they could have been 
 neither dark, barbarous, nor uncultivated ages. The an- 
 swer is, these beautiful cathedrals, could they become ani- 
 mated and vocal, would many of them tell most terrible 
 tales of their origin. They would speak of the plundered 
 widows and bereaved orphans, who wept over the stones of 
 which they were composed they would speak of the blood 
 that was shed in order that the gold with which they were 
 raised might be procured they would speak of the fell 
 superstition out of which they sprung they would speak, 
 too, of the damning marks of that very church, Avhich 
 taught, that to build a cathedral, or to found a monastery, 
 was better than " to do justly, and love mercy." Sup- 
 pose that these cathedrals are, as they are, most beau- 
 tiful, are they evidence of the existence of real religion 
 at the time ? Are architecture and orthodoxy twins ? 
 Siamese twins ? inseparable ? One rejoices when these 
 edifices are consecrated again by the accents of truth. 
 And I pray, and none can pray more fervently than I 
 do, that for ages and centuries yet to come, they may re- 
 sound with the word of truth with the voice of mul- 
 titudes crying, from their inmost hearts, " Thou art the 
 King of glory, Christ." But I can tell you, my dear 
 friends, of a temple more glorious -and beautiful than 
 York minster, or Canterbury. I will not take you to 
 St. Peter's, when illuminated for some fete with its all 
 but innumerable lamps I will not take you to Ant- 
 werp, or Brussels, or Paris, or to any other city of ar- 
 chitectural and cathedral monuments I will rather take 
 you to some sequestered glen, in the midst of that land, 
 the heather of which is now trodden by the footstep of 
 our sovereign I will take you to that lowly cottage
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 109 
 
 which has only turf for its covering, and a few rude 
 stones for its walls, into which all the winds of heaven 
 can blow, and the rain and the snow may penetrate but 
 into which, such is the reality of British freedom, even 
 the Queen cannot enter without its owner's permission 
 I will take you to that peasant's cot I will introduce 
 you into it at eventide : and if you are a member of the 
 Church of England, you will hear prayer far more im- 
 pressive than yours, justly called by Robert Hall the 
 most beautiful of uninspired composition. His prayers 
 rise from the very depths of his soul, the language is 
 severely simple the things he asks, grand and glorious 
 beyond conception as he prays for a blessing upon him- 
 self, and upon his children, and his children's children, 
 unto the third and fourth generations. My dear friends, 
 that is a more beautiful temple than the cathedral of Can- 
 terbury, or the minster of York ; for that man is a temple 
 of the Holy Ghost : God dwells in that man's heart, in- 
 lays it with holiness, and sheds over it the kindling rays of 
 a celestial splendour. That temple is the product of 
 Protestantism : the cathedrals of Canterbury and York 
 though now turned to holier uses, were nevertheless 
 the product of a religion that sprung not from heaven 
 it is too corrupt for that ; it came not from man it is 
 too subtle for that ; but it came from Satan it is the 
 masterpiece of Satan the great apostacy foretold of 
 God. 
 
 I will now endeavour to show you what was the result 
 of these judgments, on the apostate Church on which they 
 fell. That Church, as I have told you, was scourged by 
 the Goth, the Hun, and the Saracen ; it was all but ex- 
 terminated by the Turk, but was any sanctified result 
 produced on it ? No, alas ! for it is here stated, (ver. 19, 
 20,) " The rest of the men which were not killed by these 
 plagues yet repented not of the work 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 forni- 
 cation, nor of their thefts." In other words, the state- 
 ment here is, that these judgments did not soften them.
 
 110 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 God punished the apostate Church, but they remained 
 apostate still. It is here said they " repented not of the 
 works of their hands, that they should not worship de- 
 vils." The word* devils is in this place mistranslated, 
 the word in the original is cu/jo'ia, demons, which means 
 what the Greeks understood by demons, the glorified 
 spirits, or supposed to be glorified spirits, of dead good 
 men. The word used for the devil, is always ta/3o\oc, 
 or Satan, or some such expression. The expression 
 daipovia, strictly intends not fallen angels or devils, but 
 spirits of dead men separated from the body, though it 
 be applied figuratively to Satan in some few passages. 
 And therefore it is here said that they worshipped the 
 spirits of dead men, which was one cause of the inflic- 
 tion of these judgments ; and after the cessation of the 
 judgment they continued to do so still. To show they so 
 worshipped before, and continued to do so after, I will refer 
 to the seventh general Council, (and every Roman Catho- 
 lic in Christendom subscribes to that Council,) namely, 
 the second Council of Nice, A. D. 787, which passed the 
 following law : "We honour and worship the image of 
 the humanity of the Saviour, and of our Lady, the Holy 
 Mother of God." Actio iv. And again, the same Coun- 
 cil says : " For the honour rendered to the image is 
 transmitted to the prototype, and he who worships the 
 figure worsliips the substance of that which is repre- 
 sented by it." Actio vii. And these laws, old as the 
 eighth century, are still put in practice by the Church of 
 Rome. It is altogether a mistake to say that the Romish 
 religion is a novel religion : it is a very old religion ; 
 but my objection to it is that, old as it is, it is not old 
 enough. Ours is the pure religion of the Apostles ! 
 Popery is the religion of the Fathers. Ours is the re- 
 ligion of the Bible of the first age of Christianity : Po- 
 pery is the religion concocted out of Paganism, by the 
 imaginations of men semi-pagan, and inspired and di- 
 rected by Satan. I hold in my hand a book referring to 
 the 13th century, which presents a practical exemplifi- 
 cation of the worship of demons sanctioned by the second 
 
 * See Hes. Op. 121. Plat. Phaedon, 108 B. Eschylus calls 
 the deified Darius <5at/wu>i>.
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. Ill 
 
 Council of Nice, to which I have referred. This book 
 is one of great value : it is called the "Psalter of the 
 Blessed St. Bonaventura." This Bonaventure was one 
 who flourished during the time when the judgments of 
 God were thus inflicted upon the apostate Church : he 
 brings into practical development in worship the prin- 
 ciples laid down by the second Council of Nice. To do 
 so he took the Psalms of David, and wherever in any 
 psalm the word "Lord" or " God" occurred, he expunged 
 it, and substituted for it the name of the Virgin Mary. 
 This document I hold now in my hand. I will give you 
 a specimen of it ; just to show you that, during the judg- 
 ments that descended upon it, the apostate Church re- 
 pented not of its worship of demons, or departed spirits, 
 but persisted in its idolatry still. 
 
 For instance, Psalm xix. is, " The heavens declare the 
 glory of Mary ; and the perfume of thine ointment is dif- 
 fused among the nations. Pant after her, ye lost sinners, 
 and she shall lead you to the haven of indulgence * * * * 
 Let the heaven of heavens praise her, and let all the earth 
 glorify her name." Psalm xcv. " O come, let us sing 
 unto our Lady ; let us heartily rejoice in Mary, the 
 Queen of our salvation. Let us come before her pre- 
 sence with thanksgiving ; and show forth her praise with 
 psalms. O come, let us worship and fall down before 
 her : let us confess our sins unto her with tears." Psalm 
 li. is, " Have mercy upon me, O Lady j who art called 
 the Mother of Mercy," and so on. The 23rd is, " Our 
 Lady is our shepherdess," &c. And lest this should not 
 be strong enough, there is given that sublime hymn, the 
 Te Deum, subjected to the same process : " We praise 
 thee, O Mary, we acknowledge thee to be the Virgin," 
 and so on. He then proceeds with the Litany, not so 
 treated generally, in the same manner. "O God the 
 Father, have mercy on us. O God the Son, have mercy 
 on us. O God the Spirit, have mercy on us." And 
 then he goes on to say, " Be propitious to us, and spare 
 us, O Lady, from all evil and mischief, from sin, from the 
 crafts and assaults of the devil, and from thy wrath, and 
 from the torments of the damned, deliver us, O Lady." 
 I remember when I heard the Liturgy of the Church of
 
 112 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 England for the first time, I attended an English parish 
 church, where the minister did not intone it as Puseyites 
 do, nor read it as others frequently do, but prayed it as 
 Christians should do. I remember when he came to one 
 part of that sublime Litany, my heart was touched, and 
 my taste, as that of every one who has any must be, was 
 gratified. The passage was this : " In all time of our 
 tribulation ; in all time of our wealth ; in the hour of 
 death, and in the day of judgment, good Lord, deliver 
 us." I felt this alike comprehensive, scriptural, and beau- 
 tiful ! But hoAv was I horrified, when I found it thus 
 parodied by a canonized Roman saint : " In all time of 
 our tribulation, &c. good LADY, deliver us" I have 
 quoted Bonaventura, born in the 13th century, a Ro- 
 man cardinal, to show that this apostate Church re- 
 pented not of the worship of demons. This is the evi- 
 dence of it. But I am sure that most of those whom I 
 am now addressing will say, surely the Church of Rome, 
 which talks now so loud, as in the case of Pius IX., in 
 defence of all political reform, must in the 19th century 
 repudiate a document that reflects disgrace on the 
 Church, and discredit on its canonized or sainted defender. 
 Not at all, she has done no such thing. In the service 
 of the Church of Rome there is a Collect, (and that 
 Collect is used once a year,) in which the worshipper 
 prays that he may be instructed in the doctrine of the 
 blessed St. Bonaventura. But you ask, is there any 
 modern and accessible republication of this Psalter? 
 With some care, and some trouble, I have procured ten 
 successive editions of this very Psalter, published under 
 the auspices of Gregory XVI. One edition, now before 
 me, is dated 1836 ; the last edition that I have been able 
 to procure, is dated 1844 ; and the Psalms, and the Te 
 Deum, are blasphemously translated into Italian, and 
 used by the laity of the Romish Church, just as I read 
 them to you from the Latin edition which I now hold 
 in my hand. I have also a French Te Deum, addressed 
 to the Virgin, published under the sanction of the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris. If this theology was infallible in the 
 14th, of course it is infallible in the 19th century; 
 adopted once as orthodox, it can be rejected never: for
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 113 
 
 the Church of Rome stereotypes her productions, and 
 shows that, as far as doctrine is concerned, she is un- 
 changed, and unchangeable. I could produce innumer- 
 able and recent proofs of the awful idolatry of the Rom- 
 ish Church. In all her superstitions, idolatry, tyranny, 
 cruelty, and proscription, there is no change for the 
 better. She has not, therefore, even yet repented of 
 the worship of demons. The streets, cathedrals, and 
 churches of Belgium, I can state from personal know- 
 ledge, are painful proofs of this. 
 
 But the description in this passage indicates that the 
 moral state of the Church was no better. Let any one 
 read the decrees and accompanying discussions of councils, 
 that were assembled, among other things, to investigate 
 the crimes of the priests, and he will have no difficulty 
 in seeing the fulfilment of this prophecy. The very 
 poems and ballads, and the historians of these ages, are 
 confirmatory proof of their terrible degeneracy. Instead 
 of repenting of their sins, they corrupted themselves, 
 and sinned more and more. The very legends of the 
 saints, read to the people as practical theology, were 
 fitted by their indelicacy alone to contaminate their 
 moral character. The system of auricular confession, 
 which was introduced at this time, combined with the 
 compulsory celibacy of the clergy, was suited to increase 
 that contamination. There was a text-book, of which 
 forty editions are extant, first issued in the Pontificate 
 of John XXII., in which every crime had its absolution 
 and every sin its forgiveness for a fixed sum of money. 
 The bishops, even, of that day, licensed the very sin 
 which is here strongly denounced, and much of the epis- 
 copal revenue was derived from licences granted to the 
 sensual for living in that very sin. Gerson, in the 
 Council of Constance, publicly denounced the nunneries 
 as " prostibula meretricum," and he could not be con- 
 tradicted. 
 
 But, it is added, they did not repent of their " sor- 
 ceries." What were their sorceries ? Who is ignorant 
 of pretended visions, dreams, and " lying wonders," and 
 miracles, and pious frauds ? What lists of holy relics ! 
 What remains of the cross, and of the apparel of the
 
 114 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Virgin. You will say, some of you, surely such sorceries 
 are not practised now. Even now they have not repented 
 of, or renounced them ; they occur every day on the 
 continent of Europe. It was only in 1846 that the 
 Archbishop of Paris, with the sanction of his superior, 
 the Pope, published the account of a miraculous Medal, 
 which is solemnly declared to be able to convert heretics, 
 and cure diseases. Only the other day, 1847, we have 
 archiepiscopal sanction given to an account of an 
 appearance of the Virgin to two children in La Salette, 
 in which it is stated, the place she stood on became a 
 spring, the waters of which operate miraculous cures. 
 That no true Christian female, much less Mary, ad- 
 dressed the children on this occasion is plain, from the 
 words put into Mary's mouth, " If my people will not be 
 converted, I shall be compelled to allow them to fall into 
 the hands of my Son" a remark in which you may observe 
 an essentially Popish idea. Our Saviour is represented as 
 an offended judge, and Mary as an indulgent mediator, 
 who sympathizes with us, in a way and to a degree in 
 which Christ cannot. The way to propitiate Christ, as 
 if he needed such propitiation, is, it is alleged, through 
 Mary ; and the only way of propitiating God, no less 
 incensed, is through Christ. The Trinity is represented 
 as all wrath, but Mary all love. The Bible says, that 
 " God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
 Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 
 but have everlasting life." The Virgin may not come 
 between us and Christ. We need her not. Through 
 Christ, God can come down low as we have fallen, and 
 we can rise high as God is. Jesus is God : none can 
 come between Him and God. He is also man : none 
 can come between Christ and me. As God-man, he 
 fills the whole chasm that sin had made between heaven 
 and earth. He lays his right hand on the throne of 
 Deity, and his left hand on my heart, and so makes of 
 twain one. 
 
 I need not remind you of Lord Shrewsbury's Adola- 
 ratas, which are purely mesmeric creations. His Lord- 
 ship believes that in each of the hands of one of these 
 ladies are distinctly represented the stigmata or wounds
 
 THE SIXTH TRUMPET. 115 
 
 of Christ, which bleed the instant the host or consecrated 
 water is brought near, and cease bleeding whenever the 
 host is withdrawn.* 
 
 The next sin in this dark catalogue, of which the 
 Apostacy repented not, is theft. Indulgences had long 
 been sold publicly in the market, and the coffers of the 
 Vatican were filled with the produce of the sale of relics, 
 and of jubilees, and pilgrimages. Clement VI., in his 
 bull appointing the jubilee of 1350, says, " We also 
 command the angels that they place his soul in paradise, 
 entirely exempt from purgatory." Masses for the dead, 
 the sale of ecclesiastical dignities, and the prices of licences 
 to the priests to live in sin were so great, that Pope 
 Leo X. exclaimed of the gospel, "How profitable this 
 fable of Jesus Christ has been to us ! " 
 
 They repented not of their " murders." In the year 
 1179, the third Lateran denounced heretics with anar 
 thema, and commanded their goods to be confiscated. 
 The fourth Lateran, A. D. 1215, commanded that "the 
 secular power be admonished, and if needs be compelled, 
 to exterminate heretics out of their land." Every Rom- 
 ish Bishop swears still at his consecration, " I will per- 
 secute and attack all heretics and dissenters." Dominic 
 began the Inquisition as an individual persecutor, and 
 after his death the Inquisition was duly organized, A. D. 
 1233 ; that fell system of universal espionage, unsparing 
 and ceaseless proscription, whose Argus-eyed police en- 
 tered and analyzed every house, and made the human 
 heart dread even the sound of its own beatings. In short, 
 so little evidence of repentance was there just previous 
 to the Reformation, that in 1460, Alan De La Roche 
 revived the Rosary with its ten prayers to Mary, or 
 Aves, for one Pater Noster, or prayer to God. Alexan- 
 der VI., in his bull canonizing Anselin, writes : " Ro- 
 manus Pontifex viros claros inter sanctos predictos debet 
 collocare et ut sanctos ab omnibus Christi fidelibus 
 coli venerari et adorari mandare." " The Roman Pontiff 
 
 * While this new edition of these lectures is passing through the 
 press, I may add the fact of the recent discovery of the head of St. 
 Andrew at Rome, and the devotional exercises in honour of it per- 
 furmed by Pius IX. and his Cardinals. 
 i 2
 
 116 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 ouglit to place the foresaid eminent men among the 
 saints, and to order them as such to be worshipped, 
 venerated, and adored by all Christ's faithful people." At 
 the bidding of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1488, eighteen 
 thousand soldiers burst on the country of the Waldenses, 
 and depopulated the Val Louise, leaving in its caves four 
 hundred dead infants clinging to the breasts of their 
 dead mothers. From the reorganization of the Inqui- 
 sition in 1478, to the Reformation in 1517, thirteen 
 thousand persons were burnt for heresy. All was fear- 
 ful, dark, and sanguinary. God at length interposed 
 and said, as He alone can, "Let there be light;" and 
 Martin Luther stept upon the platform of Europe. 
 
 My dear friends, you and I, and all of us, are sinners 
 in the sight of God. God calls upon you also to repent, 
 not to exhibit the momentary tempest of remorse but 
 the lasting power the abiding influence that renounces 
 sin, and leads to God that repentance in short which is 
 not caused by fear of the punishment of sin, but by re- 
 gret for sin itself. Such repentance is not natural to the 
 heart of man it is not indigenous it is a flower of God's 
 own planting. " Christ is exalted to be a Prince and a 
 Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins." My 
 dear friends, think ye that those who were thus punished 
 for their transgressions, and their unabjured apostacy, 
 were sinners above all ? "I tell you nay ; but except 
 ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Do you feel 
 the force of these words : " What shall it profit a man, 
 if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" 
 I beseech you, by the mercy of God, by the preciousness 
 of atoning blood, by the prospect of judgment to come, 
 by all the happiness of heaven you would inherit, by 
 the woes of the lost you would deprecate, that you will 
 not suffer your eyes to sleep, nor your eyelids to slumber, 
 until you feel that you have within you the dawn of 
 peace with God, the first presentiment and earnest of 
 the hope of glory. 
 
 Sinners ! perishing sinners, believe on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and ye shall be saved. Turn to him with all 
 your heart. Bow the knee of the soul at his throne. 
 Does he not say, " Him that cometh unto Me, I will in 
 no wise cast out?"
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 " 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." REV. x. 1 4. 
 
 THOSE who were present last Lord's day evening will 
 recollect that I gave you a portrait, very brief, as must 
 have been necessarily the case, of the awful and over- 
 shadowing corruption under which Christendom groaned, 
 prior to the Reformation. I showed you too, that, not- 
 withstanding the Gothic judgment, four times inflicted 
 upon it next, the Saracenic woe, which almost consumed 
 it and finally, the Turkish woe, under which Constanti- 
 nople fell ; notwithstanding these and other judgments of 
 God, the nations, in the language of the chapter, " re- 
 pented not of the works of their hands, that they should 
 not worship demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and 
 brass, and stone, and of wood ; which can neither see, 
 nor hear, nor walk : neither repented they of their mur- 
 ders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor 
 of their thefts." 
 
 ]\Iy previous lectures will show that we are arrived 
 now just about the close of the 15th and commencement 
 of the 16th century. If there be present those who have 
 not heard the previous lectures, our fixing this epoch 
 will seem to be a gratuitous assumption. But those 
 who have heard the series will see that I have pursued
 
 118 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 at least a consistent and continuous chronology a chro- 
 nology that seems to me to grow more evident as we 
 proceed. The whole of it may be -wrong, but parts of it 
 scarcely can be so. If I am right in my premises, I can 
 scarcely be wrong in my conclusions. If the principle 
 of the exposition be, as it is possible it may be, a mis- 
 application, then all my chronology is wrong ; but if the 
 principle on which we have fixed it be correct, (and I 
 think that the evidence that it is so is all but over- 
 whelming,) then the conclusions which I have deduced 
 are logically and scripturally right. 
 
 This chapter, I believe, describes that most glorious 
 event, the blessed Reformation. Tractarians may de- 
 nounce it as a schism ; one of their chief spirits may 
 say, " it was a leg badly set, and must be broken again 
 in order to be set right," as he has said : but I believe 
 that, next to the great Pentecostal effusion, it was the 
 brightest and the most blessed interposition of eternal 
 truth that has occurred in the history of Christendom. 
 
 The Reformation the scene described in this chapter, 
 is set forth in vivid and impressive symbols. There 
 appears an angel : that angel of whom we have read as 
 the Angel of the Covenant the Son of God. This illus- 
 trious Angel came down from heaven " clothed with the 
 cloud." This last characteristic of the Angel is a sign 
 that the Lord Jesus is referred to. He alone is repre- 
 sented as an angel clothed with the cloud ; no created in- 
 telligence in the history of the services rendered by heaven 
 to the church, or in the description of that history in the 
 pages of the Apocalypse, is represented as thus clothed 
 with the cloud. He had next a rainbow, it is stated, upon 
 his head. That rainbow, as I have told you before, is the 
 recognised symbol of His eternal covenant " ordered in 
 all things and sure." We believe, therefore, that this was 
 a revealed manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in all 
 the glory of the gospel, just at the epoch at which we 
 have arrived. Priests and people were without light or 
 life. Christendom groaned beneath a system that had in 
 it all the corruption of the dead, and beneath a sacerdotal 
 despotism that was instinct with all the wickedness
 
 THE REFORMATION. 119 
 
 of the damned. The crisis was come: Christ must in- 
 terpose, either to crush or to convert. The Church must 
 be extinguished, or it must be purified. Mercy, not 
 judgment, was vouchsafed. Ruin Avas deserved: a Re- 
 formation came. 
 
 The nature of that Reformation is symbolically set 
 forth in the language of this chapter. First, it is in- 
 timated that it would be a manifestation of Christ spe- 
 cially as the Sun of righteousness, letting forth the beams 
 of righteousness on a benighted earth ; " his face was as 
 it were the sun." In the next place, it must have been 
 a manifestation of Christ associated in some way with 
 his own blessed book the book, for that is the meaning 
 of the word Bible : the Bible and with the preaching 
 of its contents. In the third place, we gather from the 
 accompaniment, " pillars of fire," a symbol that reminds 
 us of the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by 
 day, that went before the Israelites in the wilderness 
 that it must have been such a manifestation as cast around 
 irradiating splendour that encouraged his people, and 
 threw backward awe and darkness that damped the spirit 
 and destroyed the power of his adversaries. 
 
 Now having noticed these three points, let us see if 
 anything occurred about the era that we have fixed in our 
 chronology, that bears out and makes actual these 
 symbols and signs. We read that at the close of the 
 loth and in the commencement of the 16th century, the 
 Reformation burst upon the world. The distinctive 
 revelation in that event was Christ as the Sun of 
 righteousness. For the great doctrine that shook the 
 foundations of the Papal Hierarchy, and made Popes 
 tremble on their thrones, was not a voice from beneath, 
 or a political stratagem, or conquering battalions, but 
 the announcement of a proposition that passed like a 
 ploughshare through all the superstitions of the Vatican 
 " We are justified by the righteousness of Christ, and 
 by that alone." This rent the Romish superstition into ten 
 thousand fragments. Another feature of Christ's mani- 
 festation was, that he should speak, or roar, or utter his 
 voice as the lion the Lion of the tribe of Judah. This
 
 120 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 intimates the deep and terrible conflict the din and 
 tumult of an arduous and earnest controversy. It was 
 not a peaceful expansion of the light of morn into the 
 splendours of meridian day, as by the rising of the 
 sun ; but along with this a fell struggle between light and 
 darkness ; a desperate conflict between truth and error : 
 and it was only after earth had been drenched with 
 sainted blood, and the winds of heaven had wafted the 
 ashes of holy martyrs to the very ends of the earth, that 
 that consummation, in the light and results of which we 
 now live, was achieved and made permanent. 
 
 I refer to one well-known history of this era. In the 
 continuation of Milner's Church History there is lan- 
 guage used which forms an expressive commentary on 
 the passage I have just read, as well as the evidence of 
 its fulfilment : " After ages of superstition, and the reign 
 of ignorance," says the historian, " we see the Sun of 
 righteousness rising over Europe, with healing under 
 his wings." 
 
 In achieving this glorious event, God made use of in- 
 strumentality just as He has used it in previous epochs. 
 He might have proclaimed the atonement by illuminating 
 the concave of the sky with a cross, and writing on the 
 firmament above, so as to be legible on earth, every text 
 in the Bible. But He did not do so. Men were to be 
 saved, and He employed men to preach and persuade. 
 God works by means, when means will do He works 
 against them when they resist Him He works above 
 them when they will not do. The Reformation was 
 achieved in a similar manner. God might have shaken 
 Christendom by an earthquake He might have ex- 
 punged by one sweep all the canons of Councils, the 
 decretals of Popes, and the Psalters of superstitious 
 Cardinals. He might have written Justification by Faith 
 upon the noonday sun. He might have inscribed Re- 
 generation by the Spirit alone upon every star that studs 
 the blue firmament He might have made the winds of 
 heaven and the chimes of the desert sea to make melody 
 in man's ear, by proving to man's heart the blessed 
 gospel. But He did not do so. He chose man to be
 
 THE REFORMATION. 121 
 
 the instrument : and when God is about to accomplish a 
 great work, He selects an instrument, if not adequate, 
 at least suitable to the emergency. The instrument 
 selected for the Reformation bears a name that has 
 become a household word a name that shines in greater 
 lustre than the name of Milton, of Shakspeare, or of 
 Newton because associated with more glorious triumphs 
 a name that has left behind it a legacy that no other 
 has rivalled the legacy of an unshackled Christianity 
 an unclasped Bible a preached gospel. Need I add, it 
 is the name of MARTIN LUTHER. 
 
 In the year 1483 was born Martin Luther. He was 
 the son, as you are I dare say aware, of a poor miner of 
 Mansfeld ; and so poor was Martin Luther, that when 
 at school he had sometimes literally to beg his bread 
 from door to door, and to ask a morsel for the " love of 
 God," to keep him from starving. And yet that school- 
 boy could not be starved. His bread and water were 
 provided for him from everlasting ages. He had a work 
 and mission which he alone was designed to do. The 
 waves of the Nile could not bury Moses in his cradle of 
 bulrushes, and so not all the spirits in hell nor all the 
 priests of Rome could crush the child of the poor miner 
 of Mansfeld. The selection of such an instrument for 
 achieving the Reformation shows us, " not many mighty 
 men, not many noble men, hath God chosen : but He has 
 chosen the weak things of the world to confound the 
 things that ai-e mighty ; and base things of the world, 
 and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and 
 things which are not, to bring to nought things that are : 
 that no flesh should glory in his presence." Yet, insig- 
 nificant as he appeared to man, Europe waited for Martin 
 Luther, and Martin Luther was preserved for Europe. 
 Martin Luther '. It is a name ploughed into the hearts 
 of millions, and all the insults of Tractarianism cannot 
 efface it, and it will be mentioned with the veneration 
 due to a great saint, though never with the worship that 
 is the exclusive prerogative of Deity. While we must 
 not play the Papist by canonizing Luther, or any other 
 saint, we must not prove ourselves ungrateful by eras-
 
 122 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 ing his name from the brightest place in the roll of the 
 illustrious dead. 
 
 Luther entered the university of Erfurt in the year 
 1501. It is recorded that he made remarkable progress 
 in his various studies ; he was distinguished for the 
 strength of his intellect, the rapidity of his acquirements, 
 and the facility with which he triumphed over the most 
 difficult tasks prescribed to him. Luther excited the ad- 
 miration, we are told by Merle D'Aubigne, of all his 
 teachers. He showed himself to be a student of real in- 
 tellect, and a labourer of indomitable perseverance. He 
 showed he would shrink from no toil, and would be con- 
 quered by no difficulty. Auguries of success the most 
 splendid were given forth by his professors and teachers. 
 He was destined by some for the law he was set apart 
 by others for the Church. It was predicted by all that 
 he would prove to be no ordinary man : and such he 
 proved to be, though in a way unsuspected by his ad- 
 mii'ers. In the midst of his career, suddenly, and with- 
 out giving notice to his teachers, or assigning one single 
 reason to any of his companions, Luther determined to 
 leave the university, and enter an Augustinian convent; 
 that is, a convent adopting the principles and bearing 
 the name of the celebrated Latin father, St. Augustine, 
 of whom I have spoken in a previous lecture. What 
 could be the reason of so sudden and unpromising a 
 change ? Why did Luther thus abandon the path that 
 pointed to his realizing bright promises, and so cast a 
 cloud upon brilliant prospects ? Why did he leave a 
 university career of unrivalled promise, and immure 
 himself in an Augustinian convent, where his usefulness 
 might be utterly destroyed, his name obliterated, his 
 talents buried as in a napkin, and his prospects were 
 sure to be annihilated, as far as man could see, for ever ? 
 There was a reason : that great mind, as if struck with 
 some supernatural impulse, was stirred in the midst of 
 his university career, with solemn and awful forebodings 
 of death, and judgment, and eternity to come. That 
 great heart which quailed at no perils, and was con- 
 scious of no fear of man, began to hear sounding in its
 
 THE REFORMATION. 123 
 
 own depths the very voice of God, pre-intimating to the 
 student another course than that which university pro- 
 fessors has assigned him. His soul felt its contact with 
 the ocean of eternity : and the waves and ripples of that 
 sea began to overflow that spirit, and to reveal in its 
 bosom, as in a brilliant mirror, that great tribunal, be- 
 fore which Luther felt that monks and monarchs, princes 
 and peasants, must stand to receive judgment according 
 to the deeds that they had done in the body. In the 
 midst of university studies he suddenly felt the reality 
 of judgment and of God, and after the manner of the 
 times he thought a convent was the only proper place 
 for religious men. 
 
 What was the instrumental cause of this sudden 
 movement in his mind ? What originated these strug- 
 gles? Luther was one day searching in the library 
 of the university of Erfurt ; and, in the course of his 
 searches, he found a large volume, with strong clasps, 
 covered with dust, evidently not opened for half a century, 
 or it might be more. Struck with the strangeness of its 
 appearance, and with the bulk of the volume, he opened 
 it : it was called the Bible. He had never seen it before. 
 He knew nothing more of the Bible than the lessons 
 extracted from it in the Missal, or the incidental histories 
 given from it in the Breviary. He began to read that 
 Bible. He found in it new and awakening facts he read 
 of the guilt of man so deep that no tears could wash it 
 away, and of the holiness of God so awful that no sinner 
 could meet it ; and he felt, between his own conscience 
 in its calm and sequestered hours, and the delineation of 
 man's conscience contained in that Bible, such an identity 
 as satisfied that lonely youth that the God who made his 
 conscience, wrote that book called the Bible. And he 
 looked at it again and again, and he found fresh proof 
 that, while one page of it revealed a guilty world, the 
 other page revealed a holy, a just, and a righteous God. 
 Luther's great mind was, perhaps, touched by a celestial 
 unction, he felt that if he was, what he knew he was, 
 the chiefest of sinners, and if God was, what he read he 
 was, a just and a righteous and a holy God, then there
 
 124 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 was no prospect of salvation for his soul beyond the 
 grave. He trembled and he read : he read again and 
 again ; he trembled, and wept, and read. The Reforma- 
 tion depended upon this whether Luther should read 
 on, or whether he should shut the book, and place it 
 where it was before. The Reformation with all its issues, 
 stretching into eternal ages, was contained in the dusty 
 Bible Martin Luther discovered in the library of the uni- 
 versity of Erfurt. But God said, Come forth, and nothing 
 could repress it. God's providence seconded the leading 
 of God's grace, for we read in the interesting history of 
 Luther, by the pious Genevese historian, Merle D'Au- 
 bigne that Luther was one day walking in the fields 
 with a fellow student, when there overtook them sud- 
 denly a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning; 
 both ran for shelter, but ere they reached a place of re- 
 treat, Luther's companion Avas struck by the lightning 
 and dropped dead at Luther's feet. Luther was unscathed. 
 That companion the world could do without, but neither 
 the world nor the Church could do without Luther. This 
 solemn event impressed and awed the spirit of Luther. 
 He felt again with increasing force, Life how short I 
 Judgment how near ! Eternity how terrible ! And when 
 he recollected again what his own conscience felt, and 
 what God's word declared, and thought that he also might 
 be struck by the next flash, or overwhelmed by the next 
 storm, and sent to stand shivering and naked and guilty 
 at the judgment-seat of God, he endured an agony of 
 spirit that was beyond all expression. What, he asked 
 himself, what must I do to be saved ? What can I do ? 
 He cried out, in the anguish of his soul, " Oh my sin ! 
 my sin ! what, what can forgive me my sin ?" 
 
 Now let me beg of you to take a retrospective glance 
 at the sequestered convent of the Augustinians. Do you 
 see that pale spectre shivering amid the corridors ? Do 
 you see that emaciated monk wandering with bowed head, 
 and beating heart, and fevered eye, amid the cloisters of 
 the convent ? There is plenty to eat, brother Martin, 
 abundance of raiment, right merry companions, men that 
 fear not God, and care not for man, why be sorrowful ?
 
 THE REFORMATION. 125 
 
 This was no comfort to his soul : like the stricken deer, 
 lie preferred to wander alone, separated from the rest ; 
 there was a barbed shaft rankling in his spirit, which no 
 human hand could extract; and in that suffering, pained, 
 emaciated, lonely monk, amid the corridors and the 
 cloisters of the Augustinian convent, you have the living 
 and the visible evidence of the reality of that solemn 
 text, " a wounded spirit who can bear ? " 
 
 But look at him again, he is determined to have peace 
 if it can be had at any price. He goes to the inmates of 
 the convent ; he speaks to his brother monks ; he tells 
 them of man a sinner, and God all holy : some laugh at 
 him ; some try to amuse him with other things ; and the 
 most serious among them prescribe to him an increase of 
 fasting and penances. Luther took the only prescription 
 that seemed an earnest one. He clothed himself with 
 thorns, made long and weary pilgrimages, endured the 
 most excruciating penances, went days without food, and 
 fasted to an extent that the eremites of Tractarianism 
 make but a very shabby imitation of, and endured a 
 martyrdom while living that was not equalled or ex- 
 ceeded by the martyrdom once endured by saints that 
 are dead. In all this he sought peace, by seeking to 
 realize justification from sin. Did he find it ? Far from 
 it. No suffering of man reaches high enough to touch 
 the offended heart of an offended God ; and no penances 
 or atonement of man descend deep enough to reach the 
 conscience and communicate to it peace. When you be- 
 hold him fasting, and doing penances, and making pil- 
 grimages, and living without bread or water, and cover- 
 ing his couch Avith his tears, in order to have peace with 
 God, and, after all, reaching none, you learn another les- 
 son, so short and simple in words, but so full of a sublime 
 meaning ; a text, that would God it were written upon 
 the lintel of every cathedral, and church, and chapel, in 
 the land ! or rather, would God it were written, by the 
 Spirit of God, upon the heart of every prelate, and 
 minister, and preacher, and father of the Church : " By 
 the deeds of the law no man living can be justified." In 
 this state then of conviction in this state of alarm, that
 
 126 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 nothing could quell in this state of perplexity, that 
 nothing could remove, Luther at last met with one who 
 felt for him one who was in the Church of Rome, but 
 not of the Church of Rome. Staupitz was Vicar- 
 General of the convent, and, strange to say, a Christian 
 and a Protestant though called a Papist : there are 
 such, I believe, still : but these are not the product of 
 Popery, but the product of the Christianity that pene- 
 trates its darkness. Christians these are in spite of the 
 system to which they belong, but they are not the pro- 
 ducts and results of that system. It is not unreasonable 
 to expect that it should be so. Is there any desert in the 
 length and breadth of the continent of Africa, in which 
 there is not here and there a green and beautiful oasis ? Is 
 there any granite peak that towers to the skies, amid the 
 Apennines or the Alps, in the clefts and interstices of 
 which there is not some sweet violet that the frost has 
 not nipped, some blossom that the storm has not blasted ? 
 And even in the Church of Rome, though the sirocco of 
 a blasting superstition has swept it, and the cloud of 
 awful and overshadowing apostacy hangs over it, yet 
 such are the brightness and the power of the beams of 
 God's truth, that they penetrate the cloud, and pour 
 into the depths of the hearts of many who pant and 
 thirst in the midst of that Church for the light of life, 
 and for the love of God. So was it here. Staupitz 
 was a Christian, under a Papist in name a Protestant, 
 and yet a monk a believer in the Bible, and yet a 
 reader of the Breviary. This was inconsistent, no 
 doubt, as far as we can see ; but are there no inconsis- 
 tencies with us ? He that knows his own heart best, and 
 reads his own life most honestly, and above all, judges 
 truly as well as charitably, will be the last to condemn. 
 Luther found access to the Vicar-General : he explained 
 his case to him, and, to the amazement and delight of 
 Luther, Staupitz said, " The righteousness of Christ is 
 the only righteousness by which the sinner can be jus- 
 tified." " And the love of God in Christ," said Stau- 
 pitz, to the vexed, torn, bleeding heart of Luther, " the 
 love of God is the only fountain of genuine repentance."
 
 TUB REFORMATION. 127 
 
 " But," said Luther, " my sin, my sin : how can I expect 
 to have an interest in this ? I am a great, a miserable sin- 
 ner?" Staupitz said, "Would you only be the semblance 
 of a sinner ? then you must expect only the semblance 
 of a Saviour : but if you be, what you say you are, a 
 real sinner, then there is for you a real Saviour in his 
 blood, forgiveness in his righteousness, a title to heaven 
 and everlasting happiness." The clouds of night were 
 successively swept from the mind of Luther, and the 
 Sun of righteousness, described in the chapter, shone 
 forth upon his soul in meridian splendour a new era 
 dawned, a new career unfolded itself to his mind. Su- 
 perstition and will-worship and voluntary humility de- 
 parted, and in the light of that Sun he saw light. " He 
 beheld," to use the language of the Evangelist on another 
 occasion, " he beheld the glory of Christ as the glory 
 of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
 truth." The bitterness of Luther was gradually re- 
 moved his wounded spirit was healed ; and he was 
 heard, in the joy and excitement of his soul, to exclaim, 
 " O happy sin that has introduced me to such a sal- 
 vation !" 
 
 At this very time, the Church of Rome, not aware 
 that the monk's cowl concealed an enlightened head and 
 a Christian heart the Church of Rome, ever subtle and 
 watchful, was anxious to keep Luther quiet. I have 
 heard it said, that when the celebrated Whitefield began 
 to make too deep and powerful a stir, King George III., 
 I believe, asked his minister what should be done with 
 him ? The reply of the supple statesman was, " Make 
 him a bishop." That was a prescription borrowed from 
 the great pharmacopoeia of all such prescriptions, the 
 policy of the Church of Rome. Be it as it may, Martin 
 Luther was made, not a bishop, but a Doctor of Divinity 
 a dignity of some value, but strange enough, (for it is 
 the fact, that such policy always confounds itself,) the very 
 office with which she invested him, implied that he was to 
 be a teacher of the Bible, and that Bible he was specially 
 to study. The name remained, but the duty in reality 
 had become obsolete. The study of the Bible was utterly
 
 128 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 forgotten, though the office of an expounder of it was 
 still kept up. Luther determined, as he always did, to be 
 what he seemed, (for, as Carlyle said of him, " there was 
 no sham about that man he was no semblance that 
 monk was a real man a true man he never would live 
 in semblance he would stand always on realities.") Lu- 
 ther acted in this spirit ; for when invested with the title 
 of Expounder of the Bible, he determined to be really and 
 truly so. He immediately caused three or four planks 
 to be placed in the market-place of the town of Wittem- 
 berg, and took his stand upon these planks, and began 
 to preach : first of all, to a very few ; but eventually to 
 many, for the doctrines he uttered the strange truths 
 he enunciated, found a response in the hearts of myriads ; 
 and, at last, the crowds that came to hear Martin Luther 
 were so great, that even Pope Leo, the elegant and 
 accomplished Pope, who was far more busy in encou- 
 raging painters than in promoting the spread of Chris- 
 tianity, began to think that the monk was no common or 
 ordinary disturber of the Church. The people spoke of 
 him in some such language as this : " We have learned," 
 they said, " from this monk, to sing a new song : " and 
 what was that song ? " Therefore being justified by faith, 
 we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 And Melancthon the amiable and peaceful Melancthon, 
 who never could have originated the Reformation if 
 it had been left to his arrangement made the remark, 
 that it seemed, since Luther thus preached, " as if a 
 new day had risen upon the Christian world, after the 
 long darkness of a dark night." I have just alluded to 
 Melancthon ; and though I am speaking chiefly of 
 Luther, let me add the advice, in this place, that in esti- 
 mating Christian character, we should always recollect 
 that Christianity does not change A into B, or B into C, 
 but it sanctifies A, and it sanctifies B, and it sanctifies 
 C. In other words, the gospel does not make us other 
 men, but it renders us new men. And while some 
 thought Luther was too rough, and others that Melanc- 
 thon was too gentle, each was alike fitted and sanctified 
 for his place. If Knox had affected to be one of the
 
 THE REFORMATION. 129 
 
 elegant and accomplished preachers of the day, and had 
 been more attentive to the ring on his finger than to the 
 Bible in his hand if he had preferred to pay court to 
 queens rather than to be loyal to Christ and faithfully 
 to preach the gospel ; to study to be elegant and courtly 
 in his phraseology, rather than to enunciate the truth 
 fearlessly, it would never have been written on his 
 tombstone, " Here lies the man who never feared the face 
 of clay." It was thus that we in Scotland got rid of not 
 only the rooks themselves, but the nests and rookeries 
 in which they found their lurking-places. 
 
 The Reformation, however, was not merely a mani- 
 festation of Christ simply as the Sun of righteousness 
 arising in silent splendour. It is further declared, that 
 when Christ interposed, he not only appeared with a face 
 shining like the sun, but he also " spoke with a loud 
 voice, as when a lion roareth ; " and that lion is described 
 in a previous chapter, to be the Lion of the tribe of 
 Judah. Was there any feature now in the Reformation, 
 the counterpart of this revelation in heaven ? There was. 
 Luther's duty was not only to point out the Sun of 
 righteousness which then arose above the horizon with 
 healing under his wings, but he had also a sterner mis- 
 sion ; like Jeremiah, he was born a man of controversy. 
 He had not only to speak the truth, but to condemn and 
 to protest against error not only to point out the sun- 
 beams, but to scatter the obstructing clouds : and accord- 
 ingly we read in history, that about this very time, an 
 occasion occurred that necessitated his assuming a con- 
 troversial attitude. Tetzel, the impudent and unsanc- 
 tified emissary of the Vatican, began to preach his 
 indulgences, and to tell the people, (I quote his own 
 language,) " There is no sin so great that the indulgences 
 which I have cannot remit it. These indulgences are 
 the most precious gifts of God." " This red cross has as 
 much efficacy as the cross of Jesus Christ." " There is 
 no sin so great that the indulgence cannot remit it ; and 
 even if any one should, which is impossible, ravish the 
 Holy Virgin Mother, let him pay let him only pay 
 largely, and it shall be forgiven him." " Even repent-
 
 130 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 ance is not requisite" "indulgences save not only the 
 living, but the dead." " Ye priests, ye nobles, ye trades- 
 men, ye wives, ye maidens, and ye young men, hearken 
 to your departed parents, crying to you, from the bot- 
 tomless abyss, ' We are enduring horrible torment ; a 
 small alms would deliver us ; you can give it, and you 
 will not.' The very moment that the money chinks 
 against the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from 
 purgatory, and flies freely to heaven. O senseless people, 
 and almost like to beasts, who do not comprehend the 
 grace so richly offered. This day heaven is on all sides 
 open. Do you now refuse to enter ? With ten groschen 
 you can deliver your father from purgatory. I protest, 
 that though you should have only one coat, you ought to 
 strip it off and sell it to purchase this grace. God has 
 given all power to the Pope." " Do you know why our 
 most Holy Lord distributes so rich a grace ? The dila- 
 pidated church of St. Peter and St. Paul is to be restored, 
 so as to be unparalleled in the whole earth. That church 
 contains the bodies of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, 
 and a vast company of martyrs. These sacred bodies, 
 owing to the present condition of the edifice, are now, 
 alas ! continually trodden, polluted, dishonoured, and 
 rotting in the rains. Ah ! shall those holy ashes be 
 suffered to remain degraded in the mire?" 
 
 The impious Tetzel then quoted Scripture : " Bless- 
 ed are the eyes that see what you see. Bring money, 
 bring money, bring money ! " Luther says that Tetzel 
 uttered this cry with such a dreadful bellowing, that one 
 might have thought some wild bull was rushing among 
 the people, and goring them with his horns. Each per- 
 son paid for his indulgence according to his rank and 
 crime. Polygamy was six ducats, perjury and sacrilege 
 nine, murder eight, and witchcraft two. Perhaps the 
 most satisfactory explanation of the nefarious traffic will 
 be the perusal of one of the diplomas : 
 
 " Our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on thee, N. N., 
 and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy sufferings. 
 And I, in virtue of the apostolic power committed to me, 
 Absolve thee from all ecclesiastical censures, judgments,
 
 THE REFORMATION. 131 
 
 and penalties that thou mayest have merited ; and, fur- 
 ther, from all excesses, sins, and crimes that thou mayest 
 have committed, however great and enormous they may 
 be, of whatever kind, even though they should be reserved 
 to our holy father the Pope, and the apostolic see. I 
 efface all the stains of weakness, and all traces of the 
 shame that thou mayest have drawn upon thyself by such 
 actions ; I remit the pains thou wouldest have had to en- 
 dure in purgatory ; I receive thee again to the sacraments 
 of the Church ; I hereby reincorporate thee in the commu- 
 nion of saints, and restore thee to the innocence and 
 purity of thy baptism, so that at the moment of death the 
 gate of the place of torments shall be shut against thee, 
 and the gate of the paradise of joy shall be opened to 
 thee. And if thou shouldest live long, this grace con- 
 tinueth unchangeable till the time of thy end. In the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Spirit. Amen." 
 
 It must be obvious that this process Avas calculated to 
 acquire an extensive popularity among that numerous 
 class of persons whom licentious passions urge forward 
 to every vicious indulgence, but in whose bosoms the 
 moral faculty still retains a degree of sensibility sufficient 
 to render them uneasy even in the moments of the most 
 vicious intoxication. They learned that they might sin 
 and purchase absolution in quick succession, the amount 
 of their riches being the measure of their indulgence. 
 The temple, in the days of our Lord's humiliation, had 
 never become such a scene of nefarious traffic as this. 
 And as if to proclaim to the world that conscious thieves 
 had the management of the unhallowed gains, the chest 
 into which the price of sin was cast had three keys ; one 
 key was intrusted to Tetzel, the other to the treasurer 
 of the house of Fugger, by whom the toll was farmed ; 
 and the third was in the hands of the civic authorities. 
 They dared not trust each other. Each viewed his fellow 
 as a thief, and God beheld from heaven his house of 
 prayer literally turned into a den of sacrilegious thieves. 
 There is still another illustration of the spirit of these 
 unprincipled dealers. As soon as the labours of the day
 
 132 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 were over, they gave themselves up to every species of 
 debauchery. The sums which had been scraped together, 
 and emptied into the chest by the worn hand of labour, 
 were spent in gaming-houses, in taverns, and houses of 
 infamy. These priests were the mercenary and sensual 
 impostors, the poor people were the ignorant and 
 wronged and bleeding victims. Tetzel and his fellow 
 harpies dreaded nothing so much as the simple announce- 
 ment of the preface of the gospel, " without money and 
 without price." 
 
 The people, however, began to see through the gross 
 deceptions practised upon them. Inquiries began to be 
 made far and wide, in palaces, in halls, and in huts. If 
 souls suffer so much in purgatory, and the Pope has 
 power to emancipate them, why does he wait till he gets 
 so much money ? What is the use of rich foundations 
 for masses for the dead, seeing their souls can now be 
 rescued only by the money paid into Tetzel's box ? 
 Human nature could not stand the gross imposition. A 
 sinner one day asked a sin-broker and indulgence- 
 vender, " Can we redeem a soul from purgatory by cast- 
 ing a penny into the chest?" " Yes," said the vender. 
 " Ah ! " replied the sinner, " what a cruel man the pope 
 must be to leave a poor soul to suffer so long for a 
 penny." The miscreant venders paid inn-keepers by 
 promises of salvation, like bank-notes. None dared boldly 
 to rebuke them. Tetzel's impiety and impostures, how- 
 ever, reached the ears of Luther. His remark was 
 characteristic of the man, " God willing, I will make a 
 hole in Tetzel's drum." 
 
 Opportunities soon occurred for enabling Luther to 
 put in practice the principles he cherished even in the 
 depth of papal tyranny. As a confessor, he heard the 
 acknowledgments of numerous citizens of Wittemberg, 
 that they had been guilty of adultery, licentiousness, and 
 dishonesty. On his rebuking them, he was told, that 
 though they required absolution, they did not mean to 
 abandon the sins which they had confessed. He refused 
 them absolution. They showed in turn the indulgences 
 which they had purchased. Luther told them their bits
 
 THE REFORMATIOX. 133 
 
 of paper were of no value ; they must cease to sin, or 
 perish. Tetzel heard of the daring comments of this 
 Augustinian monk, and, mistaking the metal of the man, 
 he began to fulminate anathemas against him. He even 
 lighted fires in succession in the great square of the city, 
 and announced that he had orders from the Pope to burn 
 every heretic who should say a word against indulgences. 
 
 Luther's flock heard what Tetzel said, and some of 
 them were even infected by his deadly and pernicious 
 imposture. This awakened the mind of Luther to a full 
 investigation of his pretensions, and the result of that 
 investigation was that Luther, on the evening of October 
 31, 1517, drew up ninety-five contrary theses, or propo- 
 sitions, which he forthwith fixed xipon the doors of the 
 chief church in Wittemberg. There was no newspaper 
 then in which to advertise them nor public crier to 
 announce them ; or, if there had been one willing, he 
 dared not employ him. Luther, in the silence of the 
 night, posted his propositions upon the most public and 
 conspicuous place in the city, and the crowds that 
 gathered round to read them were innumerable. 
 
 Each of these contained a germ of Protestant truth, 
 each struck at a Popish heresy. These ninety-five 
 theses are worthy of record. Let us read one or two of 
 them as samples : 
 
 " 1. When our Master, and Lord Jesus Christ, says 
 ' Repent,' he means that the whole life of his faithful 
 servants upon earth should be a constant and continual 
 repentance. 
 
 " 2. This cannot be understood of the sacrament of 
 penance, that is to say, satisfaction and confession as 
 administered by the priest. 
 
 " 3. However, our Lord does not here speak only of 
 inward repentance : imvard repentance is invalid if it 
 does not produce outwardly every kind of mortification 
 of the flesh. 
 
 " 4. Repentance and grief that is to say, true peni- 
 tencelast as long as a man is displeased with himself, 
 that is to say, till he passes from this life to eternal life. 
 
 "5. The Pope cannot, and does not mean to remit
 
 134 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 any other penalty than that which he has imposed, ac- 
 cording to his good pleasure, or conformably to the 
 canons, that is to say, to the papal ordinances. 
 
 " 6. The Pope cannot remit any condemnation, but 
 can only confirm and declare the remission that God 
 himself has given, except only in cases that belong to 
 him. If he does otherwise, the condemnation continues 
 the same. 
 
 " 8. The laws of ecclesiastical penance can be imposed 
 on the living only, and in no wise respect the dead. 
 
 ' 27. Those persons preach human inventions who 
 pretend that, at the very moment when the money 
 sounds in the strong box, the soul escapes from pur- 
 gatory. 
 
 " 32. Those who fancy themselves sure of their sal- 
 vation by indulgences will go to the devil with those who 
 teach them this doctrine. 
 
 " 36. Every Christian who feels true repentance for 
 his sins has perfect remission from the punishment and 
 from the sin, without the need of indulgences. 
 
 " 37. Every true Christian, dead or living, is a par- 
 taker of all the riches of Christ, or of the Church, by 
 the gift of God, and without any letter of indulgence. 
 
 " 50. We must teach Christians, that if the Pope 
 knew the exactions of the preachers of indulgences, he 
 would rather that the metropolitan church of St. Peter 
 were burnt to ashes, than see it built up with the skin, 
 the flesh, and bones of his flock. 
 
 " 52. To hope to be saved by indulgences is to hope 
 in lies and vanity, even although the commissioner of 
 indulgences nay, even though the Pope himself should 
 pledge his own soul in attestation of their efficacy. 
 
 " 55. The Pope can think no otherwise than this : 
 If the indulgence, which is the lesser, is celebrated with 
 the sound of a bell, and pomp, and ceremony, much 
 more is it right to celebrate the preaching of the gospel, 
 which is the greater, with a hundred bells and a hundred 
 times more pomp and ceremony. 
 
 " 62. The true and precious treasure of the Church is 
 the holy gospel of the glory and grace of God."
 
 THE REFORMATION. 135 
 
 This was what Luther called, in his own stern and 
 rugged Saxon, " taking the goose by the throat." Leo 
 heard of the propositions of Luther : he was grieved 
 that he denied the Pope's power, but thought very 
 falsely thought that as fire had extinguished so many 
 heretics before, and as the light of the flames that had 
 consumed previous martyrs was not yet totally darkened 
 over the firmament of Europe, even the smell of fire 
 might awe and put down the rash and courageous monk 
 who avowed himself the author of the ninety-five 
 propositions affixed to the doors of the church at Wit- 
 temberg. But Luther was not the man to be put down 
 thus. 
 
 There were tremendous struggles in his bosom, never- 
 theless. He felt he stood alone in Christendom. The 
 majesty of power, the pomp of circumstance, the pre- 
 scriptions of age, the inveteracy of prejudice, his own 
 awful reverence of the Church, amid whose terrible cor- 
 ruptions and overshadowing darkness he fancied he saw 
 still bright emanations of the surviving glory ; his con- 
 sciousness of weakness of temper, impetuosity of charac- 
 ter, and comparative deficiency in patristic learning, all 
 weighed upon his great mind, and urged him to relax or 
 cease his efforts. His perplexities within and persecu- 
 tions without, would have crushed the energies of any 
 contemporary. But he was not alone. He had bread to 
 eat the world knew not of. Evidently a Divine power 
 sustained the hero-priest, leaving us a lesson we are slow 
 to learn, that the weakness of God is mightier than the 
 strength of man. It was neither earthly policy, nor 
 human passion, on the wings of which Luther swept 
 broad Europe, scattering the incorruptible seeds of truth. 
 His soul burned with love to God and sympathy with 
 men. Truth was to be uncaged, the Church to be en- 
 franchised, souls to be delivered, and Luther's great 
 heart was fitted for Luther's great work. His was a 
 holy baptism from on high. He purged his eyesight at 
 the fountain of light ; he refreshed his giant might by 
 feeding on heavenly manna, and drinking large and fre- 
 quent draughts from the fountain of living waters ; he
 
 136 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 had an apostle's soul within him, and he had also an 
 apostle's God above him. Thi? is one of the proofs that 
 the Lord has not forsaken any of the worlds of nature, 
 of providence, and of grace. Ever as a difficulty comes 
 in the perpetual evolutions of things, a spirit is intro- 
 duced willing and able to meet it, and when all around 
 is so dark and mysterious that all expectation of an 
 upshot is gone, some silent ray is piercing the mass of 
 cloud, and gradually, but surely, giving foretoken of 
 approaching day. 
 
 The Pope's fire decree only roused Luther's indo- 
 mitable spirit, for he took the Pope's bull, supposed to 
 be the most awful document exhibited in Christendom, 
 and burned it publicly in the market-place of Wittem- 
 berg. All the Wittembergers shouted at the strange and 
 striking spectacle : that shout was the tocsin of ap- 
 proaching Protestant triumph the death -knell of the 
 Papal power. It was, as we read in this passage of the 
 Apocalypse, a victorious shout, " as when a lion roareth." 
 
 Carlyle, in his own peculiar style, thus writes : " It 
 is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had 
 Roman Popery happened to pass this Luther by ; to go 
 on its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart his 
 little path, and force him to assault it ! Conceivable 
 enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace 
 about the abuses of Rome ; left Providence and God on 
 high to deal with them ! A modest, quiet man ; not 
 prompt he to attack, irreverently, persons in authority. 
 His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty ; to 
 walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and 
 save his soul alive. But the Roman high priesthood did 
 come athwart him ; afar off at Wittemberg he, Luther, 
 could not have lived in honesty for it ; he remonstrated, 
 resisted, came to extremity ; Avas struck at, struck again, 
 and so it came to wager of battle between them ! This 
 is -worth attending to in Luther's history. Perhaps no 
 man of so humble, peaceable a disposition, ever filled 
 the world with contention. We cannot but see that he 
 would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in the shade ; 
 that it was against his will he ever became a notoriety.
 
 THE REFORMATION. 137 
 
 Notoriety : what would that do for him ? The goal of 
 his march through this world was the infinite heaven : 
 an indubitable goal for him : in a few years he should 
 either have attained that, or lost it for ever ! We will 
 say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of 
 theories, of its being some mean shop-keeper grudge of 
 the Augustine monk against the Dominican, that first 
 kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the Pro- 
 testant Reformation. We will say to the people who 
 maintain it, if indeed any such exist now, Get first into 
 the sphere of thought by which it is so much as possible 
 to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther, other- 
 wise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing 
 with you. 
 
 " The monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of 
 trade "by Leo the Tenth, who merely wanted to raise 
 a little money, and for the rest seems to have been a 
 Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was any 
 thing, arrived at Wittemberg, and drove his scandalous 
 trade there. Luther's flock bought indulgences ; in 
 the confessional of his church, people pleaded to him 
 that they had already got their sins pardoned. Luther, 
 if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a 
 false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little 
 space of ground that was his own, and no other man's, 
 had to step forth against indulgences and declare aloud 
 that they were a futility and sorrowful mockery, that no 
 man's sins could be pardoned by them. It was the 
 beginning of the whole Reformation. We know how 
 it went : forward from this first public challenge of 
 Tetzel on the last day of October, 1517, through remon- 
 strance and argument ; spreading ever wider rising 
 ever higher ; till it became unquenchable and enveloped 
 all the world. Luther's heart's desire was to have this 
 grief and other griefs amended ; his thought was still 
 far from introducing separation in the Church, or revolt- 
 ing against the Pope, Father of Christendom. The 
 elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this monk and 
 his doctrines ; wished, however, to have done with the 
 noise of him : in a space of some three years, having
 
 138 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 tried various softer methods, he thought good to mend 
 it by fire. He dooms the monk's writings to be burnt 
 by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to 
 Rome probably for a similar purpose. It was the 
 way they had ended with Huss, with Jerome, the century 
 before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss, he came 
 to that Constance Council with all imaginable promises 
 and safe-conducts ; an earnest, not rebellious kind of 
 man: they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon, 'three 
 feet wide, six feet high, seven feet long ;' burnt the true 
 voice out of this world ; choked it in smoke and fire. 
 That was not well done ! 
 
 " I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolt- 
 ing against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire 
 decree of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the brav- 
 est heart then living in this world. The bravest, if also 
 one of the humblest, peaceablest ; it was now kindled. 
 These words of mine, words of truth and soberness, 
 aiming faithfully, as human inability would allow, to 
 promote God's truth on earth, and save men's souls, 
 you, God's vicegerent on earth, answer them by the 
 hangman and fire ? You will burn me and them for 
 answer to the God's message thus strove to bring you ? 
 You are not God's vicegerent ; you are another's, I 
 think ! I take your bull as an imparchmented lie, and 
 burn it. You will do what you see good next ; this is 
 what I do." 
 
 So far then we have proceeded with the history of 
 Luther, and of the efforts made by him. We have 
 identified these as illustrative of that beautiful de- 
 scription of dawning truth recorded in the passage this 
 evening read in your hearing. But there is one state- 
 ment in the chapter that long puzzled many, and has 
 only just been explained by the laborious and devoted 
 Scripture investigations of the Rev. Mr. Elliott. It is 
 stated, you perceive, in this chapter, that seven thunders 
 uttered their voices (v. 13). It is added, that as John, 
 personating Luther, (for the Apocalypse is a drama a 
 holy an inspired drama,) was about to write, he " heard 
 a voice from heaven saying to me, Seal up those things
 
 T1IE REFORMATION. 139 
 
 which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." 
 Let us see what is the meaning of this. First, it has been 
 shown by Mr. Elliot, that " Write," and " Write not," 
 are formulas, one of an injunction, and the other of 
 a prohibition, in the Apocalypse, of the most important 
 description. For instance, in Rev. xiv. 13, it is said, 
 " Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord : Yea, 
 saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours, and 
 their works do follow them." Then in Rev. xix. 9, 
 there is another passage, " Write, Blessed are they who 
 are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. These 
 are the true sayings of God." xxi. 5, " Behold, I make 
 all things new. And he said unto me, Write, for these 
 words are true and faithful." Now, you Avill notice, 
 after each of these commands, Write, there is the state- 
 ment of a reason, and that reason is, that what he was to 
 write was the word of the Spirit, or the faithful and the 
 true sayings of God. Now, guided by this usage, we 
 interpret the command here addressed to John, person- 
 ating Luther, " Write not;" and we may presume the 
 reason for "not writing," just the reverse of the reason for 
 " writing." Then you will notice, in the second place, that 
 these thunders are said to have uttered their own voices. 
 The voice of the lion that roared was the voice of Christ. 
 We may infer, therefore, that the seven thunders uttering 
 " their own" voices, was the voice of the very counterpart 
 of Christ Antichrist. We are also told that the edicts 
 of the Pope were called, in the middle ages, the thunders 
 of the Vatican. Bishops might fulminate an anathema, 
 but the Pope alone might issue the thunders. But then 
 you ask, why seven thunders ? The number seven is 
 used to denote perfection, seven being the perfect number, 
 and it may convey Antichrist's mimicry of Christ : 
 there is another reason the number indicates locality, 
 for we read of the woman sitting on the seven hills 
 in another chapter. The seven thunders issued from this 
 Papal Olympus, and were the voice of the Pope. An 
 illustration of the propriety of this application is found 
 in Le Bas's remark in his Life of Wicliffe : " The 
 thunders which shook the world when they issued from
 
 140 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the seven hills, sent forth an uncertain sound when 
 launched from a region of less elevated sanctity." 
 
 I therefore believe that the seven thunders represent the 
 voice of Rome commanding Luther to desist, or "write :" 
 the voice, " Write them not," was a command mightier 
 than Rome's, that issued from the throne of God, "Luther, 
 write them not ; " despise them, burn them, tread them 
 under foot ; " be faithful unto death, and I will give thee 
 a crown of life." But observe what follows, " I was 
 about to write them." This is Luther's account of their 
 effect on his mind, and seems to imply that Luther 
 placed some belief in them, attached some degree of im- 
 portance and efficacy to them. Now, is there any 
 evidence that he did so ? and if there be such evidence, 
 it will be an additional link that will unite the predictions 
 in the Apocalypse to the historic facts on which I am 
 now commenting. What do we read ? We find that 
 the last error that Luther parted with was the supposed 
 authority of that awful and mysterious thing the Church. 
 He learned the gospel before he learned that Popery 
 was the great Apostacy. He knew Christ to be a 
 Saviour before he knew that the Pope was the Antichrist, 
 the Destroyer. His own language, at the very time 
 that he burned the Pope's bull in the square of Wittem- 
 berg, and preached those truths that rent Europe by 
 their power and shook the Vatican by their echoes, 
 testifies that Luther, at that moment, had no suspicion 
 that Rome was the Apostacy, or that the Pope was the 
 Antichrist. His own language in after years was as 
 follows : 
 
 " After being enabled to answer every difficulty that 
 could be brought against me from Scripture, one diffi- 
 culty only remained, viz. that the Church ought to be 
 obeyed. If I had then braved the Pope as I now do, I 
 should have expected every hour that the earth would 
 have opened to swallow me up like Korah and Abiram." 
 
 He believed that the Pope was a constituted authority ; 
 this shows that the monk was not a revolutionist. He 
 did not seek a revolution he aimed only at a reforma- 
 tion. And little does a superficial world know that the
 
 THE REFORMATION. 141 
 
 true plan to prevent a revolution is, to originate always 
 a timely reformation. " He that hath ears to hear, let 
 him hear." 
 
 We read, that Luther was yet so wedded to the 
 thought that the Church of Rome was the true Church, 
 and that the Pope ought to be obeyed as the represent- 
 ative of Christ, that he thus addressed the Pope, after 
 he had proclaimed the gospel : " Most blessed Father, 
 kill me or make me alive, approve or reprove, I will ac- 
 knowledge thy voice as the voice of Christ speaking by 
 thee ! " Such was his reverence for authority such his 
 deference to what, he thought, constituted ecclesiastical 
 and scriptural powers. So little anxious was Luther to 
 oppose the Papacy, that could he have served and glori- 
 fied his Master, and won souls to Christ, he would have 
 left the Papacy to stand. But when Luther was thus 
 trembling, and hesitating whether or not he should con- 
 tinue a priest of Rome, and render canonical obedience 
 to her laws, or in other words, " write the thunders," a 
 voice sounded from heaven, that awakened its echoes in 
 the depth of his heart " Luther, write not these thun- 
 ders." Care not for the anathema of man, here is for 
 thee the benediction of God : " fear not man that can 
 only kill the body, but fear Him who, after the death of 
 the body, can cast soul and body into hell ; yea, I say 
 unto you, fear Him. 
 
 What then took place ? Just as if Luther not only felt, 
 but had heard the veiy words of the Apocalypse, he 
 writes to his friend Link, about A. D. 1518 : " My pen is 
 ready to give birth to things much greater. I know not 
 myself whence these thoughts come to me. I will send 
 you what I write, that you may see if I have well conjec- 
 tured, in believing that THE ANTICHRIST, of whom St. 
 Paul speaks, now reigns at Rome." The conviction daily 
 grew upon his mind with irresistible force, until when he 
 had burned the bull, and proclaimed the imposture it con- 
 tained, he declared, as if to fulfil the very statement of 
 the Apocalyptic passage, that these bulls and decretals 
 from the Vatican " were (I use his own words) the in- 
 fernal voices of the Roman Church." Thus beautifully
 
 142 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 does the history comment upon prophecy, and thus fitly 
 does the prophecy point out and proclaim the truths of 
 history. So rapidly did these Protestant sentiments 
 spread, that when the legate of the Pope came to 
 Worms, with great pageantry and in a vast and imposing 
 procession, as to a city where he had before found the 
 people falling upon the earth and kissing his feet, he 
 heard with terror the peasants and the burghers of Ger- 
 many shouting that he came only as the emissary of 
 Antichrist. Protestantism, in short, began to be 
 preached in the pulpits proclaimed in the streets and 
 enunciated in the market-place to infect all classes to 
 agitate all men's hearts and consciences until the voice 
 that began in a whisper, shook Europe with its thunders ; 
 and the feet that once trod so softly on father-land, 
 smote the earth with strange vibrations, and Popes and 
 Prelates trembled on their thrones. 
 
 I must leave the sequel of this most interesting sketch 
 till another Sabbath evening : in the mean time, suffer 
 me to ask you, have you ever felt that deep but real 
 consciousness of sin that Luther felt ? Have you ever, 
 my dear hearers, in the agony of your hearts, cried unto 
 God, " What must I do to be saved ?" I assure you it 
 is not to amuse your fancy, or merely to illuminate your 
 minds, but it is chiefly to interest your hearts in the 
 gospel, that I bring before you these truths ; God 
 speaks in the Bible, and through that Bible to your 
 hearts and your consciences. I reiterate his word, and 
 if I can but succeed in riveting one young man's mind 
 in bringing one wandering heart to pause, to think, to 
 inquire if I can be the instrument of awakening in one 
 heart that agitation, and that agony, and that excite- 
 ment, which the Spirit of Christ alone can quell, and 
 the voice of the Son of God alone can still I shall have 
 got infinitely more than my reward. 
 
 I know what some of you say I hear it in the 
 bookshops that some of you avow that you come here 
 merely to spend a spare hour, and to be pleased. My 
 dear friends, if you come with this motive to hear, I 
 come not with this design to preach. You and I,
 
 THE REFORMATION. 143 
 
 young man, must stand at the judgment seat of God. 
 That heart of thine that now beats strong and healthy, 
 may feel but a few more palpitations, before it beats 
 in eternity. Young man, though you, perhaps, think 
 there is long life before you, strong health, and pleas- 
 ant prospects : yet I can tell you it is not the 
 nervous system it is not galvanism it is not elec- 
 tricity that gives its pulses to your heart it is God. 
 Your heart first beats, then it halts, again it beats and 
 then it halts, then it beats again, and then another 
 pause ! It seems to me, that during each pause that 
 intervenes between each beat, your heart lifts itself to 
 God, and says, "May I beat again?" and God says, 
 " Another beat ;" and it asks, " May I beat again ?" and 
 God says, " Another beat still ;" and I ask you I put 
 it to your common sense I put it to your conscience 
 will God permit that heart to continue beating, when 
 that heart rebels against him, and provokes him every 
 day ? My dear friends, men and brethren, turn from 
 your atheistic folly. Raise your souls to God. Implore 
 his tender and forgiving mercy through Christ. Seek 
 his promised Spirit why should you procrastinate your 
 happiness. I invite you to be holy, because it leads you 
 to be happy. I entreat you to cease to be miserable and 
 wretched. I would not enter into heaven alone. I desire 
 to carry many with me. 
 
 I address to you these prophecies, because I believe 
 that many of you are already interested savingly 
 interested in Christ, and anxious to know all his will, 
 in every portion of its development ; and I address to 
 others these expositions, if, peradventure, I may stir up 
 in their hearts that interest in the truths of this blessed 
 book that sympathy with the importance of real reli- 
 gion that personal anxiety, too, about salvation that 
 deep and abiding sense of its paramount importance 
 which will constrain them to begin, if they never have 
 begun befoi'e, to look upward to Jesus Christ, and for- 
 ward to his presence, where there is fulness of joy and 
 lead those who know in their hearts and develope in 
 their lives the faith of the gospel, to hold it fast at all
 
 144 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 hazards, and feel more and more thankful to that God 
 who has taught them its blessed truths. 
 
 The Reformation has bequeathed not only new 
 vileges, but heavier responsibilities to us. See that y 
 walk worthy of them. Embody great truths in ^four ^ 
 lives enshrine them in your hearts spread them at all - 
 hazards. The time is short the hour of action is closing 3 
 the day of privilege is in its twilight. Hold fast. 
 Be faithful. 

 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 
 
 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the 
 
 lifted up his hand to heaven, 
 
 ^ware \xy Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created 
 lycu, antktke. things that therein are, and the earth, and the 
 let'em are, and the sea, and the things which are 
 ^tnereirt. that <hre should be time no longer : 
 But in the*lavs of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall 
 fo^WUild,' the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath 
 .red to his servants the prophets. 
 
 " And tin- vyico which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, 
 
 and siiirtr Go and take the little book which is open in the hand 
 
 of the angel \vhich standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. 
 
 '; And IjK>U unto, the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little 
 
 ! he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up ; and it 
 
 ^^^He thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as 
 
 ittle book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up ; 
 : a my mouth sweet as honey : and as soon as I had 
 iten it, my belly was bitter. 
 
 " And he safd unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many 
 peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings." REV. x. 5 11. 
 
 MAY I state, by way of preliminary remark, that it is 
 all but essential that those who- may listen to the lecture 
 this evening, should have heard the lecture of the 
 previous evening. In order, however, to make all plain, 
 I will recapitulate what I then said, even though it 
 should occupy two or three minutes of your time. 
 
 I stated in a previous lecture, that the close of the 
 chapter that precedes that which we have read this 
 evening, describes the awful eclipse that had fallen on 
 professing Christendom prior to the Reformation. This 
 eclipse took place in spite of every visitation of mercy or 
 judgment. I stated that the judgments poured out upon 
 apostate Christendom, first, by the Gothic invasion, 
 next, by the Saracenic woe, to use the language of the 
 Apocalypse, next, by the Turkish woe, or the Turkish
 
 146 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 irruption, had failed to operate any thing like repentance 
 on the hearts of priests or of people ; or, as it is said, they 
 " 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 fornication, 
 nor of their thefts." I observed the last Lord's day 
 evening, that a crisis had arrived, and that crisis seemed 
 to imply that, either God must extinguish his Church, 
 or he must reform it. It deserved extinction by its sins, 
 but, as it will be seen, it received and rejoiced in a Reform- 
 ation, through his grace. I showed you that, both in 
 point of chronology the chronology which we have suc- 
 cessfully and consecutively pursued, and in respect of 
 events delineated and described, it was just, and logical, 
 and Scriptural, to consider the tenth chapter the chapter 
 we have this evening read, to depict that blessed and 
 glorious event, second only to the Pentecostal effusion 
 the blessed Reformation. 
 
 I showed you last Sunday evening the great hero of 
 his age. And what is a hero ? Surely not the man that 
 deluges fields with blood, and leaves smoking ruins, and 
 wrecks, and blasted villages ; but he, who deposits in 
 the hearts of the desolate the hopes of glory communi- 
 cates to humanity new, brighter, and more thrilling 
 hopes lifts it from the degradation in which sin has 
 laid it turns its heretofore tearful face to the skies 
 and tells it that, however smitten, proscribed, and per- 
 secuted, it may look to the everlasting hills and have 
 eternity for its lifetime, infinitude for its home, the great 
 God for its Father, and all the inhabitants of heaven for 
 its blessed and its happy companions. I showed you, I 
 say, that the hero of that age was Martin Luther, and 
 that the tenth chapter of the Apocalypse, if my theory 
 be true if my premises be just (for to-night this, of 
 course, must be assumed) and I think they are so in all 
 respects delineates the Reformation, and that John, the 
 Apocalyptic seer, personates Martin Luther. 
 
 I showed you, by a comparison of the facts of history, 
 and the description that is here employed, how truly the
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 147 
 
 prediction of the prophet coincides with the facts of the 
 historian. It is stated that an angel who is, as I 
 showed you, the Angel of the everlasting covenant 
 comes. down from heaven : around his head is a rainbow 
 that thing woven of man's tears and God's mercies, of 
 the rain-drops and sun-beams the emblem of the cove- 
 nant the symbol of love the type of the gospel ; that 
 he had his face like the sun ; " to you that fear my name 
 shall the Sun of righteousness arise, with healing under 
 his wings." And I showed you that the great doctrine 
 that Martin Luther evoked from the rubbish that over- 
 laid it, and lifted prominent, luminous, and above sur- 
 rounding truths like the Jungfrau amid the lesser and 
 clustering Alps, was the great doctrine of Justification 
 by Faith alone, in the sacrifice and righteousness of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 I next directed your attention to the little book in the 
 hand of the angel ; that book which Luther received, 
 and in whose light and life he proceeded to accomplish 
 events on which we enter in the sequel of this discourse. 
 
 I referred also to that remarkable prohibition when 
 the seven thunders had uttered their voices, and " I was 
 about to write, the angel said, Write not." You recollect 
 how I explained the meaning of that prohibition. I 
 showed you that, wherever, in the course of the Apoca- 
 lypse, the voice says, " Write it down," it is added, 
 " These things ai*e faithful and true," or " These are the 
 true sayings of God," or " Yea, saith the Spirit ;" and I 
 argued that when we read the converse of this, or the 
 prohibition, " Write not," it was equivalent to saying, 
 " Martin Luther, the thunders thou hast heard are not 
 the voices of God not 'the true sayings of God' 
 not ' Yea, saith the Spirit,' but the mimic anathemas of 
 the Vatican not the thunders of the Heaven, but the 
 thunders of the seven hills. Fear them not despise 
 them proceed in thy mission fear not the face of Pope 
 Leo, for I am with thee regard them not." 
 
 I now come to that expression which is used in the 
 
 sixth verse, and which, from our translation, is liable to 
 
 misconception. This angel which appeared, " sware by 
 
 Him that liveth for ever, that there should be time no 
 
 L 2
 
 148 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 longer." Now these words do not mean that the world 
 should not remain any longer, as is perfectly plain from 
 the sequel of the chapter, in which it is stated that the 
 seventh angel had not sounded. And the description of 
 the seven vials takes place before any picture of the Millen- 
 nium is exhibited, and much of the Apocalyptic history of 
 the world is seen to evolve subsequent to this statement, 
 that " time should be no longer." Then what is meant 
 by the clause, " time shall be no longer." The meaning 
 of it is best expressed by another and, I think, necessary 
 translation " And he sware that the time should not 
 be yet;" a reference obviously to some epoch which 
 was anticipated or antedated by believers. This is 
 confirmed by the addition of the disjunctive dXXa, but. 
 The original is ml &noatv 6'rt ^ooi^oc OVKITL corcu. Now 
 the word xpovoe, time, is never used in Scripture to de- 
 note time in contrast with eternity. The \povoe here men- 
 tioned, or time, is that in Acts iii. 21, and ActsVii. 17. 
 Thus in Rev. vi., the souls were impatient that their blood 
 should be revenged, and were told Iva arairavouvTai ITI 
 )(povov fjLiKpov, " that they shall rest yet a little while." 
 This little while is that alluded to in the Angel's oath. 
 Time here means, the epoch, or the period promised, 
 the beginning of the Millennium, the end of " the time, 
 times, and half a time," or the era expected ; the expres- 
 sion "longer" is not in the original at all, it is simply 
 this, " the time shall not be yet." I will, therefore, give 
 you the literal translation of the 6th and 7th verses of 
 this tenth chapter. " He sware by Him that liveth for 
 ever and ever, that the time should not be yet, but it 
 should be in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, 
 whenever he shall be about to sound : then the mystery 
 of God shall be finished, according to the glad tidings 
 that he declared unto his servants the prophets." I have 
 given you thus the very literal rendering of the original 
 words. 
 
 You may recollect that when I explained the meaning 
 of the fifth trumpet, I gave you a description of its con- 
 tents ; and I showed you that wherever there was a Woe 
 enunciated from heaven, there was always an echo respon- 
 sive from the earth. When God said from heaven, Woe,
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 149 
 
 I showed you that in the occurrences of the time in the 
 feelings of mankind in the expectation of the world, 
 there was evidence of the presentiment and foretaste of an 
 approaching woe. Now, in accordance with this reasoning, 
 and in harmony with the plan which I have pursued, we 
 may expect when we hear the angel cry from heaven, "the 
 time is not yet," that there was upon the earth some ex- 
 pectancy of that time before the period when it should 
 be actually fulfilled. Was there any such expectancy 
 of the time about the era of the Reformation ? We open 
 history, and we find that the sudden outburst of the human 
 mind the expansion of knowledge the discovery of 
 printing the new and vigorous development of intel- 
 lect all excited a belief in the minds of mankind that 
 the Millennium itself was about to dawn. And in the 
 minds of the Christians of that epoch, Martin Luther, for 
 instance, Cranmer, Bullinger, Latimer, Zwingle, and all 
 the Reformers, there was the belief that now at length 
 Antichrist Avas to be destroyed the Apostacy to be con- 
 sumed the kingdom of Christ to be established on its 
 ruins ancient prophecies fulfilled the glory of God to 
 lighten every land and the whole earth to be filled with 
 his praise. I do not quote facts, because your time will 
 not permit it : I state the result of such facts, when I say 
 that at the time of the Reformation there was a universal 
 belief that the Millennium was about to begin, and the 
 glorious fulfilment of ancient prophecy to be realized over 
 the length and breadth of the earth. It was at this 
 moment of expectancy that the voice of the angel became 
 thus audible : " Ah Luther, thou art bitterly mistaken ! 
 you are looking for a paradise, but alas, the earth will 
 long before it arrive be like a very Pandemonium. Ah 
 Zwingle and Cranmer, how sadly you are mistaken ! 'the 
 time is not yet,' that time predicted by Daniel that time 
 prophesied by Isaiah, the pre-intimations of which re- 
 sounded from the harp of Malachi for which creation 
 groans, and all humanity in heaven and earth cries in 
 agony it is not yet. You have many a stern battle to 
 fight many an iron tyranny to grapple with many an 
 obstruction to meet and master before that period will 
 be fulfilled. It will come in all its magnificence, for I 
 have fixed it but you must wait."
 
 150 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 At the 8th verse of this chapter, we have a new com- 
 mission addressed to Luther. He had to work as well as 
 wait. " 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 be in thy belly bitter, but 
 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 : but as soon as I had eaten it, my 
 belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must pro- 
 phesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, 
 and kings." The word prophesy, I need not inform you, 
 does not, in Scripture, always denote the prediction of 
 future events. Thus, for instance, it is said, " Have we 
 not prophesied in thy name?" now this unquestionably 
 means, in the language of this dispensation, preached in 
 thy name. Again, " Whosoever receiveth a prophet, shall 
 receive a prophet's reward :" which must mean, a minister 
 of the gospel, as it was addressed to the evangelists and 
 apostles of the New Testament. The command, therefore, 
 " Prophesy again," is equivalent to the prescription, thou 
 must preach again. 
 
 And the little book here referred to, is the " Book of 
 books," as I showed you in my previous lecture ; either 
 the New Testament, as the most precious part, or the 
 Old and New Testaments, as the whole of God's revela- 
 tion to man. I believe, therefore, that here the com- 
 mand is equivalent to, "Luther, revive that preaching 
 that is obsolete evoke the sword of the Spirit from its 
 scabbard remove the dust from that volume thou hast 
 taken from the library of Erfurt unclasp that glorious 
 record raise the everlasting standard shake out its 
 folds to the winds make Europe ring with the accents 
 of the gospel speak all the truth that I command you 
 preach it to kings, and fear not preach it to peasants, 
 and believe there is a blessing upon it. Luther, take the 
 book, and though it should be bitter in thy experience, 
 it shall be sweet in the issue and prophesy again, be- 
 fore many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings." 
 
 But it may be here asked, perhaps, why was there
 
 MARTIN LUTHEK. 151 
 
 given this special command to preach ? The answer is, 
 preaching had fallen into desuetude prior to the Reform- 
 ation. Any one versed in the pretensions of the Popedom 
 will find in these a very plain reason. The preaching 
 of the truths of Scripture, and the pre-eminence of 
 Popery, could not then, and cannot now co-exist. If the 
 one be fully displayed in all its faithfulness, the other 
 must be crushed without doubt. The extinction of 
 preaching was a gradual and long preconcerted process 
 prior to the Reformation. First of all, the ministers 
 were allowed to preach only with the special licence of 
 the bishop. The bishop exercised absolute and despotic 
 power ; he might allow the ordained minister to preach, 
 if he saw no reason to the contrary ; but, if he had no 
 predilection himself for truth, he was sure to prohibit it 
 in those that were likely to let its unwelcome voice be 
 heard. Ultimately the power of preaching, or authority 
 to preach, was withdrawn from the presbyter, and con- 
 centrated exclusively in the bishop : he alone assumed 
 the sole right to preach, and the presbyters, or ministers, 
 were merely allowed to offer up the sacrifice of the mass, 
 or to assist at the great ceremonial of the altar. The 
 only exception to this was the case of the friars, the Fran- 
 ciscan and Dominican friars, who sprung up previous to 
 the Reformation. They felt it their duty to re-instate 
 preaching. But there was this difference between their 
 preaching and Luther's. They preached the legends of 
 saints ; Luther preached the living truths of the gospel. 
 Their preaching was destitute of power, because it was 
 destitute of truth ; the preaching of Luther was living, 
 because it was the light of the very Sun of righteousness. 
 Even Wicliffe, long prior to Luther, enunciated a pro- 
 position that Rome excessively disliked, viz. " that the 
 neglect of the office of preaching was the foulest treason 
 to the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 Luther, seeing in this utter extinction of preaching the 
 secret of the strength and prosperity of Antichrist, began 
 to make known the gospel ; and where and what do you 
 think was his first pulpit ? No cathedral had he ; no 
 splendid hall or room, such as this : all he had to stand 
 on was some deal planks, a little raised, in the market-
 
 152 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 place of Wittemberg, and there the glad sound of the 
 gospel was first heard, after it had been all but silenced 
 for many successive centuries. And the effect, as I told 
 you last Sunday evening, was electric. Before the 
 weakness of preaching Pope Leo trembled in St. Peter's ; 
 he felt about Luther's preaching, very much what others 
 of his party said of printing, then recently discovered, 
 " We must destroy this preaching, or this preaching will 
 soon destroy us." And when Luther discovered in a 
 preached gospel the secret of his power, and the element 
 of his success under God, he uttered that memorable 
 remark, " Would to God that he would now multiply 
 living books," that is, preachers of the gospel. The more 
 earnestly and frequently he preached, the more terrible 
 the wrath of Rome became, till bull after bull was 
 hurled against him and the seven thunders of the 
 Vatican rolled over his head, and his position became 
 perilous so much so, that a forefather of the husband 
 of our Queen, the Elector of Saxony, one of the earliest 
 converts to Protestantism through the preaching of Lu- 
 ther, out of love laid hold upon the Reformer, and con- 
 fined him in the castle of Wartberg, in order that he 
 might escape the fury and vengeance of his Popish 
 enemies. May it be, (and I am sure every heart here 
 will repeat the prayer,) that Prince Albert's sons, like 
 Prince Albert's sires, may never be ashamed of the 
 gospel of Christ ; but wherever the cross is obscured, or 
 its preachers persecuted, may they not hesitate to step 
 forward manfully, to unveil the one and shield the other. 
 Thus then Luther was confined in the castle of Wart- 
 berg, through the instrumentality or command of the 
 Elector of Saxony ; but there even he had not a mind 
 made to be quiescent : he felt that a great work was to be 
 done, and that if that work could not be done at that mo- 
 ment in the pulpit, it could be done in some degree in the 
 prison. My dear friends, Luther here sets you a precedent 
 for those who think they can only serve God in certain 
 situations. God's providence never places a man where 
 God's grace cannot enable that man to serve Him. If you 
 cannot glorify God behind a counter, you will never 
 glorify Him if you were the wearer of a noble's coronet.
 
 MAKTIX LUTHER. '153 
 
 If you cannot glorify God as a servant, you will never 
 glorify him as a master. God's providence never places 
 us, I repeat it, where God's grace cannot enable us to 
 serve Him. Luther was in prison, and in that unlikely 
 place he did the noblest work ever done in a prison. 
 Yet many noble acts have been done in prisons. Some 
 speak of consecrated places, as if no where else could 
 God's work be done. This is a grievous error, and it is 
 not violating order to say so. The jailor of Philippi was 
 converted in a prison. Some attach special efficacy to 
 octagonal baptismal fonts the jailor of Philippi was 
 baptized from a bason or a bucket, or similar vessel, in that 
 prison ; and Luther translated the Bible from Hebrew 
 and Greek into his own German mother tongue in that 
 prison ; and as he preached from the " little book " in the 
 market-place of Wittemberg, so he translated into his 
 mother tongue that "little book," when it was God's will 
 that he should be shut up in a prison, in order to escape 
 for a season the wrath and persecution of his enemies. 
 
 After Luther had been removed from the prison that 
 prison in which a friend, not a foe, had placed him he 
 began again to preach the word he had felt so sweet to 
 his own taste, and so precious to his own soul. But no 
 sooner did he begin to preach the preaching that God 
 commanded him, than he was interdicted by the Pope. 
 He was told his orders were from Rome, and his obedi- 
 ence must terminate there also. But Luther, as you will 
 recollect, had learned that the seven thunders were not 
 thunders from heaven, but the mimic thunders of the 
 Vatican, and therefore he thus replied to the prohibition, 
 " It is not from man that I have received the gospel, but 
 from the Lord Jesus Christ." In other words, Luther 
 put his feet upon what the Pope called apostolical suc- 
 cession, in order that his tongue might be eloquent with 
 what God pronounced apostolic truth. Luther felt what 
 every minister of the gospel ought now to feel, that in 
 that mission, the transmission of power is not in a line 
 parallel with the plane of the earth, but by a descent 
 direct from the throne of God. He felt that his com- 
 mission to preach the gospel was not a horizontal but a
 
 154 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 vertical transmission. He did not look backward to 
 make sure of the links of an unbroken pedigree, but he 
 looked upward in order to receive the teaching of the 
 Spirit and the blessing of God. And if ministers of the 
 Church, now-a-days, instead of looking upward to Christ 
 and deriving grace from on high, will look backward to 
 see that their succession is sure, like Lot's wife, who in- 
 stead of pressing onward to Zoar, looked behind her to 
 Sodom, they will become, like her, a fixture a pillar of 
 salt that has lost its savour. In spite of Popes and pre- 
 lates Luther persisted in preaching the glorious gospel. 
 Wherever he trod he told forth its testimony, and others 
 kindling their torch at the same central Sun, spread 
 around them its light-beams from the rivers to the ends 
 of Europe. It was literally fulfilled in the case of the 
 Reformer, " God gave the word, and great was the com- 
 pany of preachers." Bulls were fulminated against 
 him, menaces and bribes were employed to turn him, 
 but the Pope had a man to deal with not a pliant monk 
 a supple Jesuit a marketable ai'ticle, but one raised 
 up by God, and in no respect and by no power to be 
 daunted or to be put down. To show that this was the 
 character of Luther, I will quote some of his own re- 
 markable sentiments. When he was summoned before 
 the Council of Worms to give an account of his preach- 
 ing, and his friends dissuaded him from going, his reply 
 was, " If Jesus Christ do but aid me, I will never fly 
 from the field or desert the word of my God. Should 
 the Pope kindle a fire that will blaze from Wittemberg 
 to Worms, I will appear in the name of the Lord ! " 
 When Spalatin sent a messenger to him to press him not 
 to go ; to tell him that he must recollect the condemna- 
 tion of John Huss, and the treachery which that re- 
 former experienced ; the reply of Luther was, " Tell your 
 master, if there were as many devils to confront me as 
 there are tiles on the houses of Worms, I will go and 
 defend the cause committed to me." When he was told 
 that Duke George would be sure to arrest him, and put 
 him in prison, the magnanimous man replied, giving 
 evidence of the firmness of his soul, and the fixity of his
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 155 
 
 purpose, and the depth of his conviction of the truth 
 " If it should rain Uuke Georges for nine days together, 
 I will go." 
 
 Such you eee were the sentiments of Luther when 
 threatened with every sort of pi'oscription, of punish- 
 ment, and of opposition. And, now or never, we must 
 catch his spirit we must imitate his example. He was 
 not to be put down he could not be put down he 
 would not be put down ; the eternal God was his refuge, 
 and the strength of the Omnipotent sustained his spirit. 
 The truth of God needs no apology now or then it ought 
 not to be prefaced with " excuse me :" if it be the truth, 
 speak it boldly ; if it be a lie, speak it not at all. God 
 is with his own truth : the minister is to merge himself 
 in the claims of his Master, and his feelings and safety 
 in the glory and commission of his Lord. 
 
 I thus close some remarks upon him who was the most 
 distinguished minister of the Reformation from Roman- 
 ism. I have shown you that an instrument was raised 
 up adequate to the crisis. If Melancthon, so gentle and 
 beautiful in spirit, had been placed in the position in 
 which Luther was, the Reformation had, humanly speak- 
 ing, been strangled in its cradle, and perished in its 
 birth-place. God raised up an instrument fitted for this 
 work, and we and our children, and our children's chil- 
 dren, shall rejoice in the light which Luther struck forth, 
 and shall bless for generations yet to come the God that 
 raised up so great a man, and gave commission to so 
 faithful and so fearless a servant. 
 
 I need not describe, as it does not bear upon my 
 subject, the close of Luther's remarkable career ; but 
 just to show that it was in perfect keeping with his life, 
 I will read a little extract from a lecture which I deliver- 
 ed to a most important and promising association, an 
 association of young men professing the gospel, con- 
 nected with houses of business, for the purpose of in- 
 structing their own minds in the things that belong to 
 their everlasting peace an association that I commend 
 to such young men as are before me, and who may not 
 have joined it. I gave them the following account of 
 Luther's death :
 
 156 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 His death at length drew near. About one o'clock 
 of the morning of February 18th, 1546, the pain at his 
 chest became intolerable. He frequently prayed, " Into 
 thy hands I commit my spirit. My heavenly Father, 
 eternal and most merciful God, thou hast revealed to me 
 thy dear Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Him have I pro- 
 fessed. Him have I preached. I adore Him as my 
 only Saviour and Redeemer. I know I shall be for ever 
 with Him, for no one can pluck me out of his hand." 
 Dr. Jonas said to him, "Beloved father, do you still hold 
 on to Christ the Son of God, our Saviour and Redeemer ? " 
 " yes," was his last utterance. He then folded his hands 
 on his breast, turned his face to one side, and fell asleep 
 softly as an infant on its mother's breast. The Countess 
 of Mansfeld, who was present, would scarcely believe he 
 was gone, till the icy coldness of death under her touch 
 chilled all hopes. She wept as one that refused to be 
 comforted. On February 19th, his body was borne in a 
 leaden coffin to St. Andrew's church, Eisleben, where 
 Dr. Jonas preached from 1 Thessalonians, 4th chapter, 
 13 18 verses, and next day the body was borne to 
 Wittemberg. As the procession proceeded, one of the 
 crowd unexpectedly gave out and began to sing the first 
 hymn composed by Luther : 
 
 " From deep distress I call to tliee, 
 My God, regard my crying." 
 
 And the whole multitude joined in the hymn, till their 
 voices were choked with weeping. The body was finally 
 taken to the Castle church, which was crowded with 
 weepers. Bugenhagen and Melancthon successively 
 entered the pulpit. The former gave out his text, but 
 the moment he attempted to address the audience he was 
 overcome by weeping. The congregation joined in this 
 burst of feeling, and from thence the crowds in the 
 streets caught the solemn sympathy, and the whole city 
 became literally a Bochim. Martin Luther fell asleep 
 in Jesus. His mighty spirit now soars amid the sera- 
 phim, worshipping Him whose glory he vindicated, and 
 whose Church he emancipated from thraldom. His 
 ashes repose peacefully in the hope of a resurrection in
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 157 
 
 Wittemberg. His living voice consecrated its churches, 
 and his dead dust endears its soil. Kings and emperors 
 have made pilgrimages to the tomb of that monk, and 
 nations cherish in their hearts his imperishable name. 
 Charles V., Frederick the Great, Peter of Russia, and 
 Wallenstein, and lastly, Napoleon, visited the spot where 
 the remains of the Reformer lie ; and even these names, 
 the sounds of which still shake the casements of the 
 world, seem but ciphers beside the dust of Martin 
 Luther. The moral grandeur of an Augustinian monk 
 dims the lustre and diminishes the greatness of heroes, 
 consuls, and kings. Nobler far is moral than mere 
 physical dominion. He is the true ruler who sways 
 minds with truth, not he who restrains with a rod of 
 iron. We may applaud the energy which subdues re- 
 bellious provinces, and clothes with golden harvests 
 otherwise arid fields. But we must admire and infinitely 
 prefer that more glorious might which throws into other 
 minds kindling thoughts awakens in human hearts the 
 sense of their lost prerogatives, and moulds society into 
 all the forms of truth and beauty and order. The Pauls, 
 the Luthers, the Calvins, the Cranmers, and the Knoxes 
 are the true sovereigns of the earth ; the Napoleons, and 
 Caesars, and Alexanders are not to be compared with 
 them. The former shall only begin to approach their 
 meridian glory, when the latter sink into midnight 
 oblivion. 
 
 Before I close my remarks on the chapter, which I 
 have thus minutely considered this chapter, which con- 
 tains so brilliant an epitome of the blessed Reformation, 
 let me add some remarks upon the effects of that Re- 
 formation, with special reference to some objections that 
 have been made to its value. 
 
 In the first place, there is no doubt that the Reform- 
 ation of the 16th century awoke a tremendous contro- 
 versy, as well as excitement, throughout Europe. Many 
 have urged this as an objection. They still deprecate 
 controversy. They think it fitted for battle-fields, not 
 for the peaceful pastures of the gospel. I think differ- 
 ently. In politics, excitement is the peril ; in religion,
 
 158 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 stagnation is the peril. Men may be too much excited 
 about civil matters ; they are always under-excited about 
 religious truth. I think, that what we have to fear in 
 religion, is not life, but death. Give me life life with 
 its excesses in its wildest excesses rather than the 
 silence, and with it the corruption, of death. A living dog 
 is better than a dead lion. The greatest blessings have 
 been achieved by discussions : error suffers in the ordeal ; 
 truth never does : the dross is consumed in the fire ; the 
 gold comes out more brilliant, more precious, more pure. 
 The storm may injure some things for a day, but the 
 atmosphere we shall breathe for months, will only be 
 purified by that storm. " The wisdom that is from 
 above isflrst pure, then it is peaceable :" and until it be 
 made pure by discussion, it never can be peaceable in 
 its influence. True it is, discussion is not pleasant ; 
 contending for the truth, and rebuking error, is not 
 agreeable ; and if I felt I had the power by a wish, I 
 would give expression to that wish, that every rose that 
 blossoms in the gardens of the earth, should be denuded 
 of its every thorn ; that there never should be a storm 
 to devastate the fields, or to sweep the habitations of 
 old England ; that the Millennium should come on to- 
 morrow, with unsuspended sunshine its eternal noon. 
 But I know that that thorn is needful to defend that 
 rose ; that storm we deplore purifies the air that we 
 breathe ; and there never will be, and never can be, a 
 millennium of truth, and righteousness, and holiness, 
 till truth has been vindicated amid all the nations of 
 the earth. 
 
 Another result of the blessed Reformation was one 
 still more precious the unshackling and emancipation 
 of God's blessed word. To show you that this book was 
 a sealed book before the Reformation, whatever Roman 
 Catholics and their abettors may say, I add, that in 
 1229, the Council of Toulouse prohibited the reading 
 of the Scripture wholly to the laity. In 1270, James 
 the First, king of Aragon, passed a law, that whosoever 
 possessed any book of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, 
 and did not bring it to the bishop to be burned, should
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 159 
 
 be considered suspected of heresy. In 1400, Pope 
 Alexander III. condemned all translations into the 
 vulgar tongue. In 1413, Gerson, one of the best of the 
 Roman Catholic bishops at the Council of Constance, 
 complained that the practice of reading the Scriptures 
 in the vulgar tongue was still permitted. In 1711, 
 Clement XL issued a bull, (the word bull signifies a 
 document issued bj the Pope, condemnatory of some 
 error, or expressive of some precept ; and it is called 
 bull, from the Latin word bulla, which signifies a piece 
 of wax which was attached to them.) In a bull of Pope 
 Clement XL he declares it to be heresy for any one to 
 have the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, or to attempt 
 to read them at all, and insists on the civil power help- 
 ing the spiritual to put a stop to it. Dr. Wiseman, who, 
 I understand, is to be the Roman Catholic Archbishop 
 of Westminster, has declared it is not true that the 
 Bible was prohibited in the vulgar tongue, prior to the 
 Reformation : and in order to confirm his statement, 
 he cites the case of Bruccioli, an Italian, who translated 
 the Scriptures into Italian in 1532. But Dr. Wiseman 
 forgets that in 1564, the Council of Trent, in the index 
 of prohibited books, has entered the name of Bruccioli, 
 as a chief heretic, whose works must not be read. To 
 the time of the Reformation, we have evidence that the 
 Bible was not permitted to be read by the laity in the 
 vulgar tongue ; and I may show you that the Church 
 of Rome has no sympathy whatever with Dr. Wiseman's 
 pretended approval of vulgar versions of the Scriptures. 
 The present Pope is my proof; Pius IX. seems to be a 
 republican in politics ; political liberalism being the 
 latest phase of Popery. The Church of Rome is ever 
 ready for all chances. Republican the one day, she 
 can be a despot the next she can head the mob 
 as a ringleader, or crush the people as a tyrant, 
 as it may suit her purposes. So the present Pope 
 Pius IX. has began apparently a new career in po- 
 litics, but he has not introduced the least reformation 
 in his creed. For all I care, the Popedom may become 
 an autocracy or a republic. What I reprobate is its
 
 160 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 religion, not its politics. Pius IX. addressed an En- 
 cyclical letter to all the Roman Catholic bishops of 
 Christendom, in the year 1846. This document was 
 read in every Roman Catholic church throughout the 
 world ; and is received by every Roman Catholic priest 
 and prelate in Christendom. The Pope states in this 
 document, " Such is the object of these most crafty 
 Bible Societies, which, reviving an old device of the 
 heretics, do not cease to put forth an immense number 
 of copies of the books of the sacred Scriptures printed 
 in various vulgar tongues, and often filled with false 
 and perverse interpretations contrary to the rules of the 
 Holy Church, which they continually circulate at an 
 immense expense." Now one would have thought, if the 
 Bible be a good thing, that even the Pope would be 
 pleased with any body that would spread it ; but it is 
 evident that the Pope must think it is a very bad thing, 
 for he condemns those who circulate it as strongly as 
 those that circulate infamous books. Still we may give 
 the Pope credit so far, in that it is not the Bible itself 
 which he so vigorously condemns, but the Bible in the 
 vulgar tongue. Here is the secret of Romish sophistry : 
 many Protestants make erroneous charges against Roman 
 Catholics and the Church of Rome, when they say that 
 that Church prohibits the possession of the Bible this 
 is not the case. In the present day, the Church of Rome 
 does not prohibit the perusal of the Bible prior to the 
 Reformation she did not prohibit the perusal of it she 
 merely prohibits the reading of the Bible in the vulgar 
 tongue. This is all. Her law allows Englishmen, for 
 instance, to have the Bible in French, Frenchmen to 
 have it in Italian, Italians to read it in German, and 
 Germans in Spanish, and Dutch in Russian, but none of 
 them in a tongue that they can understand. It is not 
 having a dusty book, or a Hebrew, Greek, or Arabic 
 book in your hand, or in your library, that stirs up her 
 enmity and wrath, but it is reading that book in a lan- 
 guage you can understand reading it in the light of 
 God's Holy Spirit, and expressing its ennobling senti- 
 ments in your life, in your practice, in the world.
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 161 
 
 I have thus then shown you by these references, that 
 the Bible, at least in the vulgar tongue, was prohibited, 
 prior to the Reformation. One of the very greatest 
 blessings achieved by the Reformation, was the bringing 
 forth that blessed book, not in Latin, which the Germans 
 could not understand, but in German, which they could 
 read and meditate upon. Shut the Bible, and all the 
 clouds of Roman superstition will gather and darken the 
 canopy of heaven. Open its glorious page, and they will 
 flee before it like the morning mists. It is the Bible that 
 the Pope dreads. Popery and the Scriptures cannot 
 co-exist. They are irreconcilable enemies ; one or 
 other must triumph. We know the issue. Our creed 
 is not what the best men say, nor what the most men 
 say, nor what Popes decide, nor what Councils decree, 
 but what God has declared in his own blessed word. I 
 would read the Church in the light of the Bible, not my 
 Bible in the light of the Church. I would hear not 
 what the Pope thinks of the Bible, but what the Bible 
 says of the Pope. We must bring all questions to that 
 standard all disputes to that tribunal : it is the test that 
 never fails it is the balance that has no deceit the rule 
 that has no crookedness it is the judge that decides all 
 controversies, and from which there is no appeal. Were 
 all the Fathers of the Nicene age were all the Fathers 
 of the Christian Church together to proclaim, most dis- 
 tinctly and unequivocally, one thing, and were one single 
 Apostle to stand up in the midst of those Fathers, and 
 to declare the opposite, that Apostle would be right, and 
 all the Fathers would be wrong. Their unanimous tes- 
 timony does not weigh one straw in comparison with 
 one single text from God's own most blessed word. Let 
 God take from us our cathedrals, our churches, our 
 chapels let Him take from us our commercial prosperity, 
 our agricultural greatness, but oh ! may He, in his for- 
 bearing love, and in his tender mercy, leave England 
 England's Bible, and she will rise again to be the mis- 
 tress of nations, the queen of empires, and occupy a yet 
 more glorious position the birth-place of saints, the 
 nursery of heirs for God.
 
 162 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 The third result of the Reformation which I will 
 enumerate, was the preaching once more of the hlessed 
 gospel. I have said the first was the discussion of truth 
 I have said the second was the emancipation of the 
 Bible I now state that the third was the preaching of 
 the blessed gospel a new thing in the history of 
 Christendom for a thousand years. Here I must re- 
 mark, there is no system of theology which suits the 
 pulpit, or is fit for preaching, except evangelical religion. 
 The ancient Greeks and Romans had no pulpit they 
 expressed their theology by its only suitable vehicles, in 
 statues of marble, and in exquisite paintings, the pro- 
 duction of the painter's pen. And, in modern times, 
 Rationalism and Socinianism do not feel at home in the 
 pulpit. These systems practically own that the pulpit 
 is no place for them. And why? Socinianism, or, as it 
 is called here, Presbytei-ianism, owing to the fact that 
 English Presbyterianism has always degenerated into 
 Socinianism when standing alone, offers man advice, not 
 life direction, not a cure. Socinianism makes Christ a 
 mere model the sanctuary a lecture room the pulpit a 
 mere literary desk ; and the Socinian preacher, as if 
 conscious that his preaching has no life, and his Chris- 
 tianity no warmth, and his gospel no power, and his cross 
 no glory, betakes himself to lecture on Political Economy, 
 or Corn-laws and Currency. Romanism feels not more 
 at home in the pulpit : and this is very natural ; for in 
 her usage the perfect master of ceremonies is the 
 perfect priest. Dexterity in accomplishing Romish rites, 
 not power in preaching great truths, is what the Roman 
 Catholic religion requires in its ministers. A most rigid 
 conformity to its rubrics a silent but exact performance 
 of the ceremonies, is all that Rome demands. Popery is a 
 splendid performance, and her priests have each his part 
 stereotyped. Far different is Protestantism. Here it is : 
 a few planks of timber for a pulpit, and the market- 
 place of Wittemberg for a cathedral three thousand 
 agitated hearts and inquiring spirits for an audience 
 Martin Luther the preacher, and the Lord of glory in the 
 midst this is Protestantism. Jn the Romish Church the
 
 MABTIX LUTHER. 163 
 
 pulpit stands in a corner, and the altar alone is made visi- 
 ble ; in the Protestant church the pulpit is, and ever ought 
 to be, the most prominent thing ; the pulpit, with an evan- 
 gelical minister in it, the Bible on it, and the blessing 
 of God over it, is the instrument for the world's conversion. 
 I mind not very much who the preacher is, or what he 
 wears. I have my preference, but my preference or my 
 prejudice, as some of you might say, never can affect my 
 solemn and deliberate conviction of the infinite value of 
 eternal truth. I mind not whether the occupier of that 
 pulpit wears lawn sleeves, or a silk gown, or a surplice, 
 or, like the Methodist preachers, what is still more apos- 
 tolical, none of the three. I mind not much, I say, who 
 the preacher is, or what the preacher wears, that occupies 
 the pulpit only let the preacher be seen let him speak 
 out let him not look behind him to see who frowns, nor 
 before him to see who applauds, but let him proclaim 
 God's truth let him be, like Knox, one who fears not 
 the face of clay let him speak fearlessly as in the pre- 
 sence of God let his words be like Luther's cannon 
 shot, and his sermons half battles. Fears, and compro- 
 mises, and livings, and patrons, and people their 
 promises, or threats, or gains, or losses must have no 
 place in his heart, or conscience, or creed. 
 
 In the fourth place let me state, that the distinctive doc- 
 trine which Martin Luther brought forward and what 
 may be called the great doctrine of the Reformation was 
 the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone in the right- 
 eousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. This doctrine lies 
 at the foundation of the whole Protestant controversy ; 
 and you will always find this, that a convert from the 
 Church of Rome who does not leave that communion on 
 the ground of his acceptance before God is a convert 
 not worth having, certainly not to be depended on. It 
 matters not how much he may disapprove of the cere- 
 monies of that Church, or how truly he may be convinced 
 of the truth and scriptural character of ours ; unless he 
 has renounced the one and entered the other, as fully 
 persuaded that pardon and acceptance are to be obtained 
 only and exclusively through Christ, his conversion 
 wants depth and reality, and his accession is of no real 
 
 M 2
 
 164 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 value. The great doctrine that we are justified by the 
 righteousness of Christ alone, Luther proclaimed to be 
 the article of a standing or a falling Church. The Church 
 whose pulpit is silent upon that point, be it eloquent 
 upon all others, is a Church whose prosperity is based 
 upon the sand ; and the Church whose creeds and prayers 
 and pulpits are eloquent with the utterance of this great 
 truth, is a Church, be it established or not, that gives evi- 
 dence of an immovable foundation and token of an ex- 
 panding influence. Nothing seems to me so damning 
 and awful a characteristic in the Tractarian theology, as 
 its reiterated assertion that Justification by Faith, or 
 what they call the Lutheran doctrine, is a Satanic doc- 
 trine. (I use the very words employed by them.) It is 
 this that makes me believe that what is called Puseyism 
 is not a mere fracture in the window, but a great rift in 
 the walls, a terrible settlement in the very foundations. 
 The preaching of this truth is, to me, vital. The denial 
 of this truth is, in my judgment, fatal. 
 
 The Reformation, in the fifth place, was not the form- 
 ation of a new Church, but the reformation of an old 
 one. Roman Catholics would have us believe that our 
 Church is a new one, and was founded only at the Re- 
 formation : our answer should be, Not at all : it was not 
 a creation but a restoration. The Temple in Fleet Street 
 was not built for the first time three or four years ago, 
 it was only restored to what it was before, by the removal 
 of deforming rubbish. The Rhone runs along Europe 
 till it issues into the lake of Geneva ; it falls into that 
 lake a mixture of mud and water. After it leaves the 
 lake of Geneva, the river emerges clear and crystalline 
 as when it first came from its fountain. Suppose now 
 that the muddy Rhone, prior to its entrance into 
 the lake, were to become animate and vocal, and 
 were to call across the lake to the stream that flowed 
 from it with crystalline purity, " You are an upstart 
 stream : I am the Rhone, you are a totally distinct river : 
 there is no relationship between you and nie : I have 
 nothing to do with you : you are a modern thing : 
 your fountain and origin is Geneva : I am the ancient 
 stream: I come from the pristine fountain, unmixed
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 165 
 
 and perfect." The reply of the river as it leaves the 
 lake, could it also become animate and vocal, would be, 
 " You are mistaken you must have very bad advisers 
 I am still the original stream : all I have left in the lake 
 is the mud that was mingled with me : and purified 
 and unfettered, I press onward with waters of pristine 
 beauty to the sea : all I have left behind me is nothing, 
 I assure you, but the mud that mingled with you in your 
 lapse through many lands." So is it with the Reforma- 
 tion. What the lake of Geneva is to the Rhone, that 
 the Reformation is to the Church of Christ. All that 
 the Reformation did, was to separate superstition from 
 Christianity, and leave the stream of truth to flow on- 
 ward in its purity, refreshing many lands, and creating 
 around it all green and beautiful spots till it is lost in the 
 ocean of eternity. 
 
 But, asks the Roman Catholic, where was this Protest- 
 ant Church before Martin Luther ? The answer is, Do 
 you mean by that question, where were our principles ? 
 Just where they now are in the Bible. If you ask 
 where was our name, I reply, Do you mean to say that 
 the novelty of the name implies the novelty of the thing ? 
 The name of transubstantiation was not known till the 
 ninth century ; are you prepared, because the name 
 transubstantiation is modern, to admit that the dogma 
 is modern also ? They ansAver, no. Then, by parity of 
 reasoning, because the name Protestantism is not older 
 than the diet of Spires, we must not infer that the thing 
 Protestantism is not as old as the days of the Apostles. 
 But do you mean, where were the living exponents of 
 Protestantism prior to the Reformation ? Of all com- 
 munions, the last that ought to ask this question is the 
 Church of Rome. When she asks where were Pro- 
 testants before the Reformation, she asks a question her 
 own archives can answer. Go to the valleys of the 
 Cottian Alps, and you will find the ashes of many of 
 them there whom you burnt. Go to the cells and dun- 
 geons of that hell on earth, which you term the Inquisi- 
 tion, and you will learn their bones and their dust are 
 buried there. Rome crushed them ever as they ap- 
 peared ; silenced the witnesses in the flames ; and then,
 
 166 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 after she has done the deed, she asks with sarcastic 
 triumph, Where were Protestants before the Reforma- 
 tion ? Did I ever tell you of an illustrative incident re- 
 corded in the Travels of Lord Lindsay in Egypt? He 
 states that, in the course of his wanderings amid the 
 pyramids of that patriarchal and interesting land, he 
 stumbled on a mummy, proved by its hieroglyphics to 
 be at least 2000 years of age. In examining the mummy 
 after it was unwrapped, he found in one of its closed 
 hands a tuberous or bulbous root. He was interested in 
 the question how long vegetable life could last ; and he 
 therefore took that tuberous root from the mummy's 
 hand, planted it in a sunny soil, allowed the rains and 
 dews of heaven to descend upon it, and in the course of 
 a few weeks, to his astonishment and joy, that root burst 
 forth and bloomed into a beauteous dahlia. It seemed to 
 me that we have in this an answer to the question, where 
 was Protestantism before the Reformation. It was 
 closed in the iron grasp of the Roman Apostacy, and 
 all that Luther did was to unclench that terrible hand 
 and extricate the seed of truth. Sowers started up in all 
 lands, and planted it in England, in Scotland, and in 
 Germany : and now the living seeds, through the blessing 
 of God, have spread forth and grown up in all countries ; 
 and the vast numbers of churches scattered throughout 
 the land are its blossoms. 
 
 I have thus, then, drawn several lessons from that 
 great event on which I have been commenting the 
 blessed Reformation. There is a practical lesson with 
 which we must conclude this evening : it is this, cleave 
 to your Bibles. The Bible is the standard of the 
 gospel, and wherever it is unfurled, there freedom finds 
 a footing, humanity a champion, and pure religion a 
 suitable resting-place. Much was sacrificed to preserve 
 it sacrifice much in order to spread it. The Re- 
 formation was in that book which Martin Luther 
 took from the library of Erfurt the continuation of 
 the Reformation is in that blessed volume still. Rome 
 laughs at our Acts of Parliament, she spurns our penal 
 laws. It is vain to try to put her down by the might 
 of intellect, or by the policy of men. But I will tell you
 
 MARTIX LUTHER. 167 
 
 what she does fear. Ever as she sees that pale, emaci- 
 ated monk begin to draw out of that dusty library a book 
 that has not been opened for many centuries as she sees 
 that monk unclasp it as she beholds him study its con- 
 tents as she sees him read in it his solemn and blessed 
 commission, she trembles and is dismayed. Leo trem- 
 bles on his throne while that monk reads and prays over 
 the Bible in his convent. She dreads still that blessed 
 book ; ever as she hears the sound of its voice, or of its 
 footfall, she trembles. Her religion is based upon man's 
 word, it cannot stand. Our religion is based upon God's 
 word, and it will endure for ever. 
 
 My dear friends, recollect the Reformation has left a 
 responsibility upon you. Better, O unconverted man ! 
 better you had perished before Luther was born, than 
 perish amid the light and truth of the age in which we 
 live. Better you had perished when the Bible was 
 locked in a dead tongue, than perish repudiating and 
 neglecting it when it has become a household book 
 giving names to your babes sanctifying your bridals 
 your comfort at burials the visitor of the poor man's 
 cabin and the prince's palace, and the eloquence of 
 10,000 pulpits around you. Better you had perished 
 when that Bible was inaccessible, and our God unknown, 
 than perish when that God bids you, from the skies, come 
 to Him, and his outspread Bible offers to teach you all 
 its truths, and the minister, standing in Christ's stead, 
 with Christ's own commission, beseeches you, "be ye 
 reconciled unto God." Brethren, " what shall it profit a 
 man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " 
 and again, " how shall we," you and I, " how shall we 
 escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " 
 
 Slighted mercies are the sharpest judgments a neg- 
 lected gospel is the greatest condemnation. Look unto 
 him who is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give re- 
 pentance and remission of sins. Believe and be saved 
 why will ye die ?
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 
 
 " And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall 
 
 prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed 
 
 in sackcloth. 
 " These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing 
 
 before the God of the earth. 
 " And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their 
 
 mouth, and devotireth their enemies : and if any man will hurt 
 
 them, he must in this manner be killed. 
 " These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of 
 
 their prophecy : and have power over waters to turn them to 
 
 blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they 
 
 will. 
 " And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that 
 
 ascendeth out of the bottomless pit 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. 
 " And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations 
 
 shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not 
 
 suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. 
 " And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and 
 
 make merry, and shall send gifts one to another ; because these 
 
 two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. 
 " And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God en- 
 tered into them, and they stood upon their feet ; and great fear 
 
 fell upon them which saw them. 
 " 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." REV. xi. 3 12. 
 
 LAST Lord's day evening I closed my remarks upon 
 that momentous era pronounced by millions to be the 
 blessed Reformation. I showed how expressly that 
 Reformation was shadowed forth and represented in 
 the beautiful imagery of the chapter that immediately 
 precedes this. I explained first the darkness that had 
 long overshadowed Christendom ; I showed that the
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 169 
 
 judgments inflicted upon it did not lead its guilty ones 
 to repent ; I then showed that a crisis had arrived when 
 either God's judgments must consume it, or God's mer- 
 cies must convert it. His ways are not our ways ; 
 judgment is his strange work ; he remembered mercy ; 
 lie gave the word, " Let there be light." Martin Luther 
 emerged from obscurity, stood up and preached the 
 gospel in the market-place of Wittemberg, and from 
 that hour, to borrow the imagery of the Apocalypse, the 
 Sun of righteousness shone forth in his splendour, and 
 the voice of the Lion of the tribe of Judah was heard 
 loud as when a lion roareth. I also explained to you the 
 meaning of the "little book." I showed to you that the 
 little book was the Bible ; that little book was imme- 
 diately received by the Protestant Reformer as personated 
 by the Evangelist John ; and then folloAved soon after 
 the great characteristic result an unclasped Bible, and 
 the unfettered preaching of the everlasting gospel. 
 
 .The chapter which contains so graphic and beautiful 
 a sketch of these two mysterious personages called the 
 witnesses for Christ, is a retrospective review of the past 
 history of the true Church of Christ amid the darkness 
 that overshadowed the earth, and the corruption that 
 pervaded all its churches, its clergy, and its people, prior 
 to the Reformation. In other words, the sacred seer, 
 according to the commission of his Lord, stands amid the 
 light, which Luther, as an instrument, struck out, and 
 from that light he darts a retrospective glance at the 
 past history of the true Church, and sees amid its densest 
 night rays of glorious light, and beneath the turbid 
 current of men's corruptions, the unpolluted and the 
 crystalline stream of the faithful testimony of Jesus. I 
 will now endeavour to show the complete identity be- 
 tween the Apocalyptic description herein contained, and 
 the historical facts as they have actually occurred, and 
 are recorded in the page of history. 
 
 It presents confirmatory proof of our view of the 
 witnesses, that at the Reformation, for the first time for 
 many hundred years, Christian men began to look back- 
 ward, to ascertain where the truth and its followers had
 
 170 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 been during the dreary ages that had at length passed 
 away. It is a remarkable or rather an intended coin- 
 cidence, that as in the Apocalypse there is a retrospect 
 from the era of the Reformation of the witnesses for 
 Christ during the apostacy of the middle ages, so in his- 
 tory there is the record of the Reformers beginning on 
 their emerging from Popery to trace backward, not the 
 succession of the priest, but the succession of the Chris- 
 tian people, the faithful witnesses and followers of the 
 Lamb. The one is the Apocalyptic retrogression, the 
 other is the historical retrospect. A remarkable proof 
 of this is the fact that one of the earliest books of the 
 Reformation was called the " Catalogue of Witnesses," 
 drawn up by the Magdeburg centuriators ; and the very 
 next remarkable book that appeared after the Reforma- 
 tion was that book that ought to be in every English- 
 man's home, and the records of which ought to be regis- 
 tered in every Briton's memory Fox's Book of Martyrs, 
 i. e. Witnesses. We have, then, in the Apocalyptic 
 drama, the appearance of two witnesses, the retrospective 
 history of whom is given in this chapter. We have, at 
 the very period in history at which this retrospect in the 
 Apocalypse begins, the appearance of catalogues of wit- 
 nesses from the Magdeburg centuriators in Germany 
 downward to Fox's Book of Martyrs, composed and 
 published in England. 
 
 Now, then, that the Reformers were called to take this 
 retrospect is plain from an argument then and now used 
 by the Church of Rome, as well as by those divines who 
 adopt the main positions by which that great Apostacy is 
 defended. The text is cited, " Upon this rock will I build 
 my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
 it." The argument of the Romanist and Tractarian con- 
 structed on it is this : If the whole Church of Christ 
 became apostate for nine hundred years, then the truth 
 of the promise, " the gates of hell shall not prevail," 
 is contradicted by fact. I will not comment upon the 
 meaning of this text. I will reserve that for a future 
 occasion ; I merely quote it in order to show you that 
 the Reformers were met by this plausible argument, and
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 171 
 
 were necessarily driven to look backward, in order to 
 ascertain if there had been from St. Paul onward to Lu- 
 ther a continuous chain of living witnesses, resplendent 
 with the glory and transmissive of the truth of God, and 
 constituting thereby the Church of Christ. This was 
 what the Reformers called, and what I call, the true suc- 
 cession. The Apostolical succession is a great truth ; 
 the Popish or Tractarian succession is a great lie. The 
 one is God's plain declaration, the other is tradition's 
 absurd invention. God said there should be no age in 
 which he would not have a Church : I am going to show 
 you that there has been not a century, not a year, not a 
 week in which there has not been audible testimony and 
 visible witness for the truth as it is in Christ. But if 
 you should say, as the Tractarians and Romanists assert, 
 that there must be shown a personal succession in the 
 clergy as well as laity ; my answer is, there has always 
 been in the history of the Church a stated ministry of 
 the gospel. There never has been an age in which 
 there has not been a Christian, nor has there been a flock 
 for which there has not been a minister. But that is 
 quite different from what I have called the Romanist 
 succession. If you should say to me, If it be not true 
 that there has been, and can be shown, a continuous suc- 
 cession of canonical ordinations from the Apostle Peter, 
 called, very ignorantly, the first Pope, down to Pius IX., 
 called, very properly, the present Pope, that, unless I 
 admit this, Christ's promise is not fulfilled, I must 
 utterly dissent from your opinion ; I might show the 
 inaccuracy of your argument by plain historical facts, 
 as well as plain scriptural reasons. For so often has this 
 succession been broken, and so completely has it been 
 interrupted, that to say there is no ministry except 
 where that succession can be proved, is but to play into 
 the hands of the infidel. I can show you that if the 
 Apostolical succession, or the necessity of a continuous 
 chain of ministers from Peter clown to Pope Pius IX., 
 ought to be insisted on, that there is not a Church 
 or valid ministry in Christendom. If the Apostolical 
 succession be what Dr. Pusey says it is, the Church of
 
 172 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 England has it not, and the sooner he transfers his per- 
 son, as he has already transferred his belief, to the 
 Church of Rome, the better : at least the more creditably, 
 because more consistently, he will act for himself, and 
 beyond dispute the better for those he leaves behind him. 
 To illustrate this, suppose a chain stretching from Exe- 
 ter Hall to Westminster Abbey ; suppose, by accident, 
 one solitary link drops from that chain, the mischief is 
 as complete as if a thousand links had dropped from 
 it : or suppose that the transmission of that mysterious 
 power claimed by Romanists is something like the trans- 
 mission of the electric fluid by the wires of the electric 
 telegraph, if there should be introduced into the chain 
 a non-conducting link, it is just as bad as if the wire 
 were snapped in twain, or no wire at all, for there would 
 be no conductor of the mysterious element. Now I can 
 show you that in the succession of Popes there have 
 been many depraved, corrupt, and uncanonical, and 
 therefore non-conductors. I can show you that in the 
 succession of Bishops there have been simoniacal. de- 
 graded, or unconsecrated Bishops, and if I can show you 
 that there is a link wanting or a non-conducting link 
 introduced in the chain supposed to conduct the myste- 
 rious element of which Rome claims a monopoly, I show 
 a flaw in the chain a gap in the succession the arrest 
 of a valid ministry the extinction of the Church the 
 triumph of scepticism. 
 
 But I will not dwell upon this. 
 
 In prosecuting this very interesting inquiry, to my 
 mind the most interesting contained in the Book of Re- 
 velation, I will lay before you first the character, the 
 existence, the early history of the two witnesses of Christ. 
 Next, the death and resurrection of these witnesses ; and 
 in the third place, their resurrection, their standing on 
 their feet, their ascent into heaven. 
 
 I. The name assigned to the persons here described 
 is " witnesses." The word witness is the translation of 
 a Greek word, paprvc, which Greek word is the parent 
 of our common word " martyr." The reason why the 
 word paprve, which means simply a witness, came
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 173 
 
 to denote one that seals his testimony with his death, 
 is just this, that to preach Christ, or to profess Christ, 
 during the iron despotism of the Papacy, or during the 
 earlier persecution of the Pagan, was altogether a differ- 
 ent thing from professing Christ now. Then the pro- 
 fession led not to preferment, it preceded you to the 
 stake. Then to be a Christian was not a passport to 
 office, but a crime to be punished with death. And 
 hence to be a witness, in the early ages, was just equi- 
 valent to be what is meant by a martyr now. That 
 these persons then called " witnesses," were persons and 
 not things, I am satisfied on strong and irresistible evi- 
 dence. And here you must allow me to explain myself. 
 Some time ago, when I knew less, and probably felt less 
 for I grow in grace and in light too as well as you 
 I published a volume of sermons ; in this volume 
 there is one on the Two Witnesses. The two wit- 
 nesses I then said were the Old and New Testaments. I 
 have changed my opinion. I am satisfied my arguments 
 were unsound my reasons inconclusive. We must not 
 hesitate to cast what is popularly understood as consist- 
 ency behind us, if taught something better, and to emit 
 truth as God teaches us. I cannot and will not be ar- 
 rested in my preaching, by looking over my shoulder to 
 see if what I say now be consistent with something I 
 have said before. Truth is always consistent with truth. 
 It is human to err, it is heavenly to forgive. The two 
 witnesses, I am satisfied, are not books but persons: my 
 reasons for believing so are, I think, most satisfactory. 
 First, the word paprvg occurs in the Bible exactly thirty- 
 four times. In thirty-three of these it means a person ; 
 why change its meaning in the thirty -fourth ? Now this 
 alone seems to me conclusive : it is never once applied 
 to a book, but in every case to a person. Again, to 
 " prophesy," which I showed you, in my lecture on the 
 Reformation, is equivalent to "preach," is always pre- 
 dicated of a " person," never of a " thing." Hence I 
 infer that the two witnesses were two living witnesses, 
 not two testaments or dead records. 
 
 In the second place, the two witnesses are here called
 
 174 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 "my" witnesses. Christ is the speaker, and the wit- 
 nesses he declares are his. He calls them " witnesses 
 of Me." We may expect, therefore, in tracing the history 
 of these witnesses, that they should proclaim and stand 
 for the perfect atonement of Jesus, and protest against 
 all that would conceal or undervalue the efficacy of his 
 precious blood ; that in the face of all pain and peril 
 they would maintain upon the earth the offices of Jesus 
 as Pi*ophet, Priest, and King ; upholding the virtues of 
 his grace, the advent of his glory, the integrity of his 
 word, and the purity and spirituality of his Church. 
 
 And in the next place, we may expect they will exhibit 
 contemporaneously with this a protest the most emphatic 
 and the most unflinching against that Avhieh was the 
 predominating heresy in the age in which they were to 
 maintain their testimony. 
 
 These two witnesses are called the " two olive trees 
 and the two candlesticks, standing before the God of the 
 earth." The word candlestick is, literally translated, 
 "a lamp-bearer," (Xv%i'ta,} and in every case it means, 
 in the Scripture and in the Apocalypse, a "Church." 
 " The seven candlesticks are the seven Churches:" a 
 Church meaning, not consecrated earth or Gothic cathe- 
 dral or Protestant chapel, but, in the language of a truly 
 Protestant article of the Church of England, " a com- 
 pany of faithful Christian men ;" "where two or three 
 are gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
 midst of them." The candlestick may be small, con- 
 fined to one house " the church in the house of Nym- 
 phas ;" or it may be larger, confined to the four walls of 
 an edifice ; or it may be, in my judgment, larger still, 
 comprehending all the churches that constitute a national 
 communion, or it may be still larger, denoting the 
 whole visible Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 If the "two candlesticks" mean the "Church," that 
 is, the Christian people the "olive trees" mean the 
 ministers, or those that preach the gospel to them. My 
 reason for this is shown by a reference to Zechariah, 
 where we read, in chap, iv., " Then answered I and said 
 unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 175 
 
 side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? 
 And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these 
 two olive branches which through the two golden pipes 
 empty the golden oil out of themselves ? And he an- 
 swered me and said, Knowest thou not what these 
 be ? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are 
 the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the 
 whole earth" (11 14). Now, who was it that stood up 
 before the Lord ? We read this morning in the 9th 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the priests 
 entered into the first place, and the high priest, once a 
 year, into the second, or holy place. In short, it was their 
 office to " stand before the Lord" They are called the 
 " sons of oil," or, literally translated, the " communicators 
 of oil." The ministers of the gospel convey from the Great 
 Fountain what feeds and gladdens the people committed 
 to their care. We have then the " candlesticks," or the 
 assembled Christians we have " the olive trees," or the 
 presiding ministers : in other words, the prophecy is, 
 that there should be a Church and ministry of the gospel 
 in every age, from the day when the darkness of the 
 apostacy should become all but universal, till the day 
 that Martin Luther should speak, and bring once more 
 into prominence alike the fact and true functions of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 The next point I direct your attention to, is their 
 number; it is said their number should be ttco. What 
 can be meant by this ? In the first place, it may mean 
 that they should be numerically two, and I can show you 
 that this is borne out by history, for there have been, 
 as we shall presently see, two contemporaneous lines of 
 witnesses protesting against the Papacy and proclaiming 
 the glorious truths of the gospel ; one line called Pauli- 
 cians, in the East ; another line, terminating in the Wal- 
 denses, in the West ; and these from the days of Augustine 
 downward to the days of Luther. And in the next place, 
 the reason of the number two being employed may be 
 this : in the Mosaic law two witnesses were necessary 
 to constitute a valid testimony more might be corrobo- 
 rative, but two were essential ; and it therefore may
 
 176 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 imply that during the dark and terrible eclipse of medi- 
 aeval Europe there would be witnesses for Christ, but 
 these reduced to the fewest that could be consistent 
 with a valid testimony. 
 
 The condition of the witnesses is expressed by their 
 prophesying in sackcloth. Sackcloth is a symbol of 
 mourning. Daniel put on sackcloth ; so did the Nine- 
 vites when they proclaimed a fast : the ancient prophets 
 also wore sackcloth, denoting that their office Avas a 
 painful one, and their condition a persecuted one. Now, 
 as I shall show you, these witnesses not only preached 
 the gospel, but preached it clothed in sackcloth subject 
 to persecution, proscription, martyrdom, and death. 
 
 It is said, " And if any man will hurt them, fire 
 proceedcth out of their mouth, and devoureth their 
 enemies : and if any man will hurt them he must in 
 this manner be killed. These have power to shut 
 heaven that it rain not in the days of their pro- 
 phecy: and have power over waters to turn them 
 to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues as 
 often as they will." Now this language is the literal 
 description of the prerogative of Moses and Aaron, who 
 turned the waters of the Nile visibly into blood. 
 Elijah also commanded fire to come from heaven and 
 smite the earth. The prediction that there should be no 
 rain for 1260 years, plainly means not a literal, for that 
 would be impossible, but a spiritual drought, and if 
 this clause be figurative the others must be so also. 
 The fire going out of their mouth is in all probability 
 the symbol which sets forth God's fiery judgments 
 descending on their enemies through their word ; and 
 that I am not exaggerating or doing violence to the 
 passage by applying this literal language to spiritual 
 judgments, may be seen by referring to the case of the 
 prophet Jeremiah, to whom God says, " I will make 
 my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and 
 it shall devour them." Another illustration of this 
 solution is in Amos, (viii. 11,) " Behold, the days 
 come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in 
 the land ; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 177 
 
 but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall 
 wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the 
 east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the 
 Lord, and shall not find it." 
 
 In the next place, the duration of their prophecy was 
 to be 1260 days that is, as I told you, 1260 prophetic 
 days, or 1260 literal years; I will not now, however, 
 enter on the evidence of the commencement of this period, 
 which was, I conceive, when the apostacy was clearly 
 established, nor on its close, as we shall subsequently come- 
 to it. I may merely state that about the sixth century 
 their testimony began, as in that century their testimony 
 was specially required. Gibbon, to whom I have so fre- 
 quently referred, describes the state of that century in 
 which, we believe, the witnesses began their testimony in 
 the following words : " The use and even worship of 
 images was firmly established before the end of the sixth 
 century." " The Christians of the sixth century had in- 
 sensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism. The 
 throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of mar- 
 tyrs, saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration." 
 
 Pope Gregory, called the Great, writing A. D. 590, states, 
 " All things which were predicted are taking place. The 
 King of Pride is at hand, and what is unlawful to utter, 
 an army of priests is prepared for him." 
 
 Mosheim writes of this very same century : " At this 
 time true religion, weighed down by a heap of insane 
 superstition, was unable to raise its head. The early 
 Christians were wont to worship God and his Son only : 
 but in this age (sixth century) they who were called 
 Christians worshipped the wooden cross, the images of 
 saints, and the bones of men." In this very century too, 
 or rather at the commencement of the seventh, viz. in 
 the year 604, the Pantheon at Rome, which contained the 
 images of all the gods of the heathen, was, without the 
 least violence designed or done in making the change, 
 transformed into a Romish temple : the idols which were 
 known of old by the names of Jupiter and Venus, were 
 christened by the names of Peter and the Virgin Mary. 
 The statue of Jupiter received the keys into his hand
 
 178 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 instead of the thunderbolt he had originally, and is de- 
 voutly kissed as St. Peter at this day ; and from thence- 
 forward the Pantheon became literally the Pandemonium, 
 that is, the assembly of all the daemons (^atyuoyta) or glo- 
 rified spirits of apostate Christendom. 
 
 This, then, may be regarded as the era at which the tes- 
 timony of the witnesses began. The Justinian code was 
 also drawn up in the sixth century, and by that code the 
 Pope was publicly declared to be the supreme Pontiff, and 
 all dissent from his decrees or worship was pronounced 
 to be heresy ; and then was introduced that ancient and 
 favourite practice in the visible Church, the burning 
 men's bodies to change men's creeds, on the mistaken 
 ground that a great error could be extirpated, or a great 
 truth promoted, by punishing them who persisted in the 
 one or refused to embrace the other. From this era all 
 the elements of the predicted apostacy were developed on 
 the theatre of Europe : priests devoured widows' houses, 
 and built cathedrals with the spoils absolved from oaths 
 and evangelized with the sword made Divine service a 
 pantomime, and religion priestcraft lengthened the 
 creed, and shortened the decalogue ; became the parent 
 of ignorance in the cabinet immorality in the palace 
 idolatry in the temple pollution in the confessional 
 and licentiousness of life, provided there was strict ob- 
 servance of ceremony, every where. 
 
 " If," says Gibbon, " in the beginning of the fifth cen- 
 tury, Tertullian or Lactantius had been suddenly raised 
 from the dead, to assist in the festival of some popular 
 saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonish- 
 ment and indignation on the profane spectacle which 
 had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a 
 Christian congregation. As soon as the doors of the 
 church were thrown open they must have been offended 
 by the smoke of the incense, the perfume of flowers, and 
 the glare of lamps and tapers which diffused at noon- 
 day a gaudy, and, in their opinion, a sacrilegious light ; 
 if they approached the balustrade of the altar they made 
 their way through the prostrate crowd, consisting for 
 the most part of strangers and pilgrims who resorted to
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 179 
 
 the city on the vigil of the feast, and who already felt 
 the strong intoxication of fanaticism, and perhaps of 
 wine ; their devout kisses were imprinted on the walls 
 and pavement of the sacred edifice, arid their fervent 
 prayers were directed, whatever might be the language 
 of their Church, to the bones and blood or ashes of the 
 saints, which were usually concealed by a linen or silken 
 veil from the eyes of the vulgar. The Christians fre- 
 quented the tombs of the martyrs in hope of obtaining 
 from their powerful intercession every sort of spiritual, 
 but more especially of temporal blessings. The walls 
 were hung round with symbols of the favours which they, 
 the pilgrim offerers, had received. Eyes, hands, and feet 
 of gold and silver, and edifying pictures, which could not 
 long escape the abuse of indiscreet or idolatrous devotion, 
 represented the image, the attributes, and the miracles of 
 the titular saint," 
 
 I have already named such witnesses as AUGUSTINE, 
 whose writings are so replete with evangelical truth, 
 and VIGILANTIUS, who is so decided in his Protestant 
 testimony. I will now allude to a succession of eminent 
 and faithful witnesses, who appeared like stars amid the 
 darkness of the overshadowing night, illuminating por- 
 tions of the earth, and who were visible proofs in the 
 world that there was in every age a true and believing 
 Church. After Augustine and Vigilantius, C^ESAKIUS 
 OP ARLES in Dauphine appeared, a faithful witness for 
 the truth. Milner translates two passages from the 
 canons drawn up at a Council held at Orange expressly 
 under the dictation of Caesarius in the year 529 : " If 
 any one say that the beginning or the increase of faith, 
 and the very affection of belief, is in us not by the gift of 
 grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, cor- 
 recting our will from infidelity to faith, from impiety to 
 piety, but by nature, he is an enemy to the doctrine of 
 the Apostles." " If any man affirm that he can by the 
 vigour of nature think any thing good which pertains to 
 salvation as he ought, or choose or consent to the saving, 
 that is, to evangelical preaching, without the illumination 
 and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all the 
 N 2
 
 180 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 sweet relish in consenting to and believing the truth, he 
 is deceived by an heretical spirit." At the beginning of 
 the seventh century, and in the Popedom of Gregory the 
 Great, appeared another witness, whose name was SERE- 
 NUS ; he witnessed against the apostacy, proclaimed the 
 truths of the gospel, and eloquently protested against 
 image worship, the popular passion of the age. THE 
 COUNCIL OF FRANKFORT, A. D. 794, had three hundred 
 Christian Bishops in it, who entered their protest against 
 image worship, and gave expression and emphasis to the 
 scriptural sentiments of Cresarius and Serenus. An 
 Englishman, ALCUIN, witnessed about A. D. 804. PAU- 
 LINUS of Aquileia appeared between A.D. 810 and 841. 
 He proclaimed salvation through the shed blood and 
 living intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ only. AGO- 
 HARD, Archbishop of Lyons, and CLAUDE of TURIN, 
 one on one side of the Alps and the other on the opposite 
 side, raised a distinct and impressive testimony to the 
 truth, about A. D. 817. Agobard proclaimed, "There is 
 no other mediator than the God-man : " and for these 
 sentiments alone his work was placed in the' Index Pro- 
 hibitorius. He preached the evangelical sentiments of 
 Augustine with the intellectual vigour of Calvin, the 
 force and intrepidity of Luther, and the faithfulness of 
 Knox. Claude of Turin was misrepresented and ma- 
 ligned ; he was denounced as a heretic, and persecuted 
 as a malefactor. He thus wrote to a contemporary : 
 " A rumour is spread as if I were teaching a new sect 
 contrary to the Catholic faith. I teach no new sect : 
 this trouble came upon me, because, when I found all the 
 churches at Turin stuffed full of vile and accursed 
 images, I alone began to destroy what all Avere so sot- 
 tishly worshipping." 
 
 Claude thus expresses his truly Protestant testimony : 
 " If we ought to adore the cross because Christ was 
 fastened to it, how many other things are there which 
 touched Jesus Christ ! Why do they not in the same 
 sense worship all that are virgins because a virgin 
 brought forth Jesus Christ ? Why do they not adore 
 mangers and old clouts because he was laid in a manger
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 181 
 
 and wrapped in swaddling clothes ? Why do they not 
 adore fisher-boats because he slept in one ? Let them 
 adore asses because he entered Jerusalem on the foal of 
 an ass. All these things are ridiculous, rather to be la- 
 mented than set forth in writing, but we are forced to 
 set them down in opposition to fools. Come to your- 
 selves again, ye miserable transgressors, why do you 
 crucify the Son of God again and expose him to open 
 shame?" 
 
 How beautiful is the following letter of his : 
 " Truth grows not old by length of time, she minds not 
 places, she does not suffer herself to be overtaken by 
 night, she does not shut herself up in shadows, she is 
 near to all that turn to her from all parts of the world, 
 she is eternal to all, she is every where she changes and 
 converts those that behold her. In this idea of my faith 
 I separate all change and alteration from eternity ; and in 
 this eternity I discover no space of time, for the spaces 
 of time are made up of future and past notions of things. 
 Now there is nothing past or future in eternity, for that 
 which passeth ceaseth to be, and that which is to come 
 is not yet begun to be ; but as for eternity, it is that 
 which is always present. Since this is the case, we are 
 not commanded to go to the creature that we may be 
 happy, but to the Creator, who alone can constitute our 
 bliss." 
 
 GOTTESCHALC left his monastery, A. D. 846, and under 
 deeper and purer impressions than a monastery could 
 teach, began a missionary career. After preaching the 
 gospel of the grace of God in Lombardy and the Del- 
 phinate, he was summoned by two archbishops, Ra- 
 banus Maurus of Mentz, and Hinckmar of Rheims. By 
 these he was condemned, degraded, beaten with rods, 
 and when dead denied Christian burial ; which last re- 
 fusal is not, you perceive, peculiar to the 19th century, 
 but is pretty old. 
 
 ALCUIN rejected the Apocrypha, and recognised no- 
 thing like purgatory or transubstantiation. He makes 
 the following truly practical remarks : " In the Holy 
 Scriptures man may contemplate himself as in some 
 mirror what sort of a person he is. The man who de-
 
 182 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 sires to be ever with God should often pray to Him and 
 study his holy word, for when we pray we speak to God, 
 and when we read the holy book God speaks to us." 
 
 From the Western line of witnesses I now pass to a 
 sketch of the Eastern, where a testimony was equally 
 needed. 
 
 In the year 653, an Armenian not an Arminian but 
 an Armenian named CONSTANTINE, having received 
 and read a copy of the Gospels and Epistles of St. Paul, 
 was so impressed by their purity and excellence, that he 
 professed to be a disciple of St. Paul alone, and of no 
 existing or other human teacher. We read that this 
 Constantine, after preaching the gospel for thirty years, 
 was condemned for his heresy, in the language of the 
 Romanist Petrus Siculus, that is, in our view, for his 
 attachment to the gospel. SIMEON, an officer of the go- 
 vernment, was sent to see that he was stoned to death, 
 according to sentence, but he was so struck by the gran- 
 deur of the sentiments he preached, by the patience with 
 which he endured his sufferings, the fervour with which 
 he prayed for his foes, and the meekness that animated 
 and actuated him, that he left the stoning of the martyr, 
 embraced his principles, forsook all and preached the 
 gospel, for which he also was speedily put to death. 
 
 Soon after him there rose above the horizon SERGIUS, 
 another, and perhaps the most eminent witness among 
 the Paulicians, or followers of Paul, as they designated 
 themselves. A female was blessed to the conversion of 
 this eminent Paulician minister. A woman addressed him 
 one day who had heard that he was celebrated for his 
 talents and intellectual attainments ; she urged him to 
 study the gospel. He replied, " It is not lawful for me to 
 read the Bible, but only for the priests." The woman, 
 who was not to be repelled, said, " It is not as thou sup- 
 posest : there is no acceptance of persons with God. Your 
 priests, because they adulterate God's word, read some 
 things out of it, and leave out others." He was struck 
 by the statement : he resolved to make inquiry, and the 
 result of that inquiry was, that he became a faithful 
 minister and missionary, and, in his own words, " From 
 east to west and from north to south I have preached the
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 183 
 
 gospel of Christ, and laboured with these my hands." 
 He died, having finished his testimony, in the year 830. 
 One remarkable sentiment of his identifies him with the 
 line of witnesses. "We," he said, "are Christians, you 
 are Romans." We may judge of the numbers of faith- 
 ful witnesses in the East, by the fact that 100,000 were 
 drowned or put to the sword in the persecution by the 
 Empress Theodosia. 
 
 I have thus brought down these lines of witnesses to 
 the year 900, when both the Paulicians in the East, and 
 Gotteschalc and Paul and Caesarius and Claude of Turin, 
 and others scarcely less faithful, in the West, were merged 
 in that illustrious band, signalized by their faithfulness 
 to Christ and their devotedness to the extension of his 
 cause, the WALDENSES. About A. D. 1045, appeared 
 BERANGER, who declared "the See of Rome is not the 
 Apostolic seat, but the seat of Satan." He shrunk before 
 persecution, it is true, and yet renounced not finally his 
 testimony. A faithful witness for Christ about this time 
 shone forth in PETER DE BRUYS, whose testimony may 
 be briefly comprehended in these words : " Baptism is 
 of no avail without Faith :" " Christ's body is not pre- 
 sent in the Eucharist ; purgatory is a mere invention ; 
 and the dead are not benefited by our prayers." He was 
 seized by the Papists and burnt to death near Toulouse, 
 A. r>. 1126. About this time appeared HEXRY, an 
 Italian, who was the Whitefield of his day, and whose 
 eloquence was so persuasive, and the truths he uttered 
 so startling, that the eloquent Bernard of Clairvaux, the 
 grand advocate of Rome, and the last of the Fathers, was 
 sent to oppose his progress. Bernard thus describes the 
 results of Henry's preaching which seemed to him, as a 
 Romanist, very disastrous, but to us evidence of good. 
 " The churches (i. e. the Romish ones) are without peo- 
 ple the people without priests the priests left with- 
 out reverence and the Christians without Christ (i. e. 
 the wafer-Christ) no oblation for the dead, and the 
 shrines of the saints were utterly neglected." The 
 charms and exorcisms of the priests, the gross super- 
 stition of the people, and the mercenary exactions of the 
 Church, were swept away by the exhibition of the dawn
 
 184 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of that Sun of righteousness which shone at the Reform- 
 ation in meridian glory. 
 
 The Waldenses, or Vaudois, was the modern name given 
 to a very ancient people composed of true Christians, 
 protected amid the Cottian Alps since the days of the 
 apostles. They derived their name from PETEU WALDO, 
 a merchant at Lyons, in France. He early received the 
 knowledge of the gospel from some of the Paulician 
 emigrants. He began to preach what he had received, 
 and was the means of converting hundreds of Roman 
 Catholics to the truth as it is in Jesus. There is a beau- 
 tiful and interesting document drawn up in the year 
 1100, called the NOBLE LESSON ; it is written in early 
 French. Nothing can be more apostolical than its 
 language nothing more scriptural than its sentiments, 
 and it remains a standing and eloquent proof, that 
 when the darkness was densest there were not wanting 
 those who could testify for Christ, and be his faithful 
 witnesses. 
 
 One or two passages of this faithful and ancient tes- 
 timony I copy from Mr. Faber's translation of it : 
 
 " The Scripture saith, and we ought to believe it, that 
 all men shall pass two ways the good to glory, the 
 wicked to torment. 
 
 " Wherefore, whosoever wishes to do good works, he 
 ought to begin with giving honour to God. He ought 
 likewise to call upon his glorious Son, the dear Son of 
 holy Mary, as also upon the Holy Ghost, who gives to 
 us a good life. 
 
 " Though one has extorted from another a hundred 
 pounds, yet the priest will pardon him for a hundred 
 pence, and sometimes for less, when he can get no more. 
 Arid he tells him a long story and promises him pardon, 
 for he will say mass both for him and his forefathers. 
 Thus granting pardon to them whether they be just or 
 felonious, and he puts his hand upon their heads. But 
 when he leaves them he occasions a grand festival, for he 
 makes them to understand that they have been very well 
 absolved. Yet ill are they confessed who are thus faulty, 
 and they will certainly be deceived by such an absolution. 
 For I dare to say, and it will be found very true, that all
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 185 
 
 the Popes from Sylvester down to the present one, and 
 all the Cardinals, and Bishops, and Abbots, even all 
 such put together, have no power to absolve or pardon a 
 single creature in regard to a single mortal sin, inasmuch 
 as God alone pardons, and no other can do it. 
 
 " Those who are pastors ought to preach to the people 
 and pray with them, and often feed them with divine 
 doctrine." 
 
 Reinerus, their bitter enemy and a bigoted Papist, says 
 of them and the favourable testimony of a foe is more 
 valuable than the testimony of a friend : " They are se- 
 date, modest ; they have no pride in clothes they do 
 not carry on commerce, that they may avoid falsehoods, 
 oaths, and frauds they are chaste, and abstain from 
 lying and swearing only they blaspheme the Roman 
 Church and clergy" 
 
 While he thus denounces them he gives an account of 
 their missionary spirit : " They introduce themselves to 
 the acquaintance of the noble and great. Having sold 
 rings and such like, he is asked, have you any thing 
 more to sell. He answers, I have more precious gems. 
 I will give them to you if you will not betray me to the 
 clergy. I have one brilliant gem from God the Bible, 
 whereby men may have the knowledge of God." 
 
 And what seems to be a remarkable coincidence, 
 they are called, by this great persecutor, " the sack- 
 cloth-wearing heretics ; " and it is no less remarkable 
 also, that the heraldic arms of the Waldenses, as well as 
 the armorial bearings of their chief town, Lucerne, at 
 this day, are the embodiment of the very picture given in 
 the Apocalypse a candlestick with a lighted candle 
 on it, surrounded by this motto, " The light shineth in 
 the midst of darkness." 
 
 Such, then, is a mere sketch of the long line of wit- 
 nesses, whose testimony was heard when the visible 
 Church was dead, and from whose lips came forth that 
 sustained and eloquent protest for Christ, and against 
 the delusions by which his glory was eclipsed, that has 
 made them worthy of a place in the Apocalyptic record 
 as the witnesses for Christ the sackcloth-wearers of
 
 186 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Reinerus the lights shining in darkness, according to 
 their own beautiful motto. 
 
 The expression, " Fire proceedeth out of their mouth 
 and devoureth their enemies," may mean, I think, that 
 their testimony proved to all that heard it, either the 
 savour of life, or the savour of death. And, perhaps, ac- 
 cording to the continuous allusive character that pervades 
 the Apocalypse, there is transferred to them in reality 
 what was gratuitously assumed by their foes, as their own 
 prerogative. Thus we read, for instance, that the lan- 
 guage used by the Papal authorities of the day was, " We 
 shut heaven against them we send famine, and thirst 
 we call fire from heaven to consume the heretics." Now 
 says the Saviour " Antichrist's is an assumption the 
 power of the Papacy is pretence but the prerogative of 
 my witnesses is real. The curse pronounced by the 
 Papacy on these my witnesses, approaches them not ; 
 but the blessing pronounced by them comes in the shape 
 of a consuming and corroding curse upon all that reject 
 and repudiate their testimony." 
 
 The next statement is, when they have completed 
 their testimony, " the beast that ascendeth out of the 
 bottomless pit shall make war upon them." The phrase, 
 " when they shall have finished their testimony," does not 
 mean when they shall have finished altogether the com- 
 mission with which God has charged them. I may show 
 this by a reference to the chapter we read this morning. 
 It is there said that the high priest enters the tabernacle 
 continually, fulfilling or finishing or completing his ser- 
 vice that is, completing his stated duties, or the several 
 acts as prescribed for each day, but not ceasing from 
 the priestly office. So these witnesses completed their 
 testimony ; that is, they finished the special testimony that 
 devolved upon them, in short, their specific mission ; they 
 testified against the sacramental errors the invocation 
 of saints the Apostacy the Antichrist. They closed 
 that chapter of protest which was required by the cor- 
 ruption of the age ; but which is no more required when 
 that age has passed away. It does not mean that the 
 gospel ceased to be proclaimed finally just before their
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 187 
 
 death, but that these witnesses, after they had finished 
 that special testimony which was required by the exist- 
 ing corruptions prior to their death, should be assailed 
 by the great Antichristian apostacy, and put to death, 
 and refused the rites of Christian burial. 
 
 Now, the fact that the beast described in chap. xiii. 
 made war against them, is plainly proved by such acts as 
 are contained in the Councils that were held at that period. 
 The fourth Lateran, in 1215, denounced all heretics to 
 be extirpated, their goods to be confiscated, and enjoined 
 the secular power to see that this was done. Crusades, 
 peculiarly sanguinary, were instigated against the Wal- 
 denses. Children were forced to denounce their parents 
 when their parents were suspected of heresy, and in the 
 year 1488, eighteen thousand soldiers burst upon the 
 Valle de Louise, and burned or drowned upwards of 3000 
 persons, and had recourse to one desperate and horrible 
 act of cruelty, which has been recently illustrated by their 
 national successors in Algeria : for when the poor Wal- 
 denses fled to dens and caves for refuge, they piled straw 
 and wood at the mouths of the caves, and set fire to it : 
 and a few days after there were found 400 dead infants 
 clinging to the breasts of their dead mothers in these 
 caves ! A terrible proof surely is this that the beast did 
 make Avar against the witnesses of Christ. 
 
 We now come to that which is the most striking and, 
 perhaps, the most interesting part of this history ; and 
 though I shall detain you twenty minutes longer, I am 
 sure you will patiently listen to it when you consider its 
 importance and interest. The great fact to which we 
 now come is the Defeat and Death of the Witnesses. 
 
 The witnesses, we have shown, were not two indi- 
 viduals, but a succession of individuals. The death of 
 the witnesses must therefore not be the martyrdom of 
 two individuals, but the extinction of a continuous series. 
 The witnesses were figurative, being not two persons, 
 but the symbols of a succession of persons ; their death 
 must be figurative also in other words, it must be 
 the extinctio of their testimony. Now, then, we come 
 down just to the only period in the history of Christen-
 
 188 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 dom during which we learn there was a pause, awful 
 and foreboding, in the protest of the people of God 
 against the abominations of the Papacy. There was no 
 century in the fifteen, but one, during a part of which 
 the anti-Papal testimony was silent. The Bohemian 
 Brethren at this time reported the extinction of the Wal- 
 denses. And in order to show you that I am not giving 
 a sketch out of my own imagination, but an historic ful- 
 filment of a great prophetic truth, I will read to you 
 what Milner says of the 16th century : " The 16th 
 century opened with a prospect, of all others the most 
 gloomy in the eyes of every true Christian ; corruption, 
 both in doctrine and in practice, exceeded all bounds ; 
 the Roman Pontiffs were the uncontrolled patrons of 
 impiety. The Waldenses were too feeble to resist the 
 Popedom, and the Hussites were reduced to silence." 
 Such is the testimony of Milner as to the commence- 
 ment of the 16th century. 
 
 Mr. Cuninghame of Lainshaw, who has written most 
 powerfully and eloquently on prophecy, says, " At the 
 commencement of the 16th century, Europe reposed in 
 the deep sleep of spiritual death under the iron yoke of 
 the Papacy. That haughty power, like the Assyrian of 
 the prophet, said in the plenitude of insolence, ' My hand 
 hath found as a nest the riches of the people, and as one 
 gathereth eggs have I gathered all the earth, and there 
 was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or 
 peeped.'" Mosheim writes " At the commencement of 
 the 16th century, no danger seemed to threaten the Roman 
 Pontiffs. The agitation previously excited by the Wal- 
 denses and the Bohemians was suppressed by the Council 
 and the sword, and the surviving remnant was an object 
 of contempt rather than fear." And in an article in the 
 " Encyclopaedia Britannica" upon the Reformation, it is 
 stated, that at the commencement of the 16th century 
 " every thing was quiet, every heretic was extirpated." 
 
 Notice, in the next place, what is stated in the chap- 
 ter, " Their dead bodies shall lie in the street of 
 the city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, 
 where also their Lord (KV^WQ CUTWJ') was crucified."
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 189 
 
 Now what was that city ? That city is described in 
 Rev. xvii. as Rome ecclesiastical, as distinguished 
 from the city of God, of which believers are citizens. 
 Quesnel, a witness, called the Rome of that day " Egypt 
 and Sodom." Grostete called the Romish despotism 
 "Egyptian bondage;" and Luther, when he speaks of 
 Rome, calls it worse than Sodom and even Gomorrah. 
 And the expression, " where also their Lord was cruci- 
 fied," is explained by a parallel expression, " Ye have 
 crucified Christ afresh, and put him to an open shame." 
 And you will notice that just as the twelve tribes of Is- 
 rael, to whom in their apostacy Rome is likened, had its 
 capital, Jerusalem ; so Roman Christendom had Rome 
 for its capital ; as Christ was literally crucified at Jerusa- 
 lem, the capital of the first, so he was spiritually crucified 
 in Rome, the capital of the second or the great apostacy. 
 
 You will also notice, that it is said " their bodies shall 
 lie in the street of the city," and the word which is here 
 translated "street" is irXarda, and the meaning of it is 
 the market-place, or forum. The market-place or forum 
 was the place where justice was administered political 
 discussions were held controversial proceedings were 
 settled it was the tribunal of the judge, the place in 
 which equity was statedly dispensed. And we read, that 
 just as the Jews looked to Jerusalem of old, as the great 
 centre of all justice, so Christendom looked in the middle 
 ages to Rome as the great seat of moral, ecclesiastical, 
 and judicial power. Gibbon writes, " The nations began 
 once more to seek on the banks of the Tiber the laws and 
 oracles of their fate." 
 
 Then, in the next place, it speaks of those who were 
 in this great city, " which spiritually is called Sodom and 
 Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified " as " they of 
 the people and kindreds and tongues and nations," E'K 
 riav e'Ovwv. This language conveys the idea of represent- 
 ation, and means the representatives from nations and 
 peoples. It is not said, "the people and tongues and 
 kindreds and nations shall see their dead bodies," but it 
 says, " they of the people," IK TWV Xativ, they who are the 
 representatives or deputies of the people and nations and 
 kindreds " shall see their dead bodies." We are led by
 
 190 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 this very language to the idea of representation ; and the 
 only idea of representation in the middle ages was that 
 exhibited in a General Council. During the years 1512 
 onward to 1514, the great Council of the Lateran was 
 held under Julius II., and by Leo X., in the most con- 
 spicuous place or TrXartia at Rome ; and one of the 
 speakers in the midst of the Council made the remark, 
 "This is the meeting-place of Europe ;" a natural re- 
 mark, in Rome, the great centre of the Western world ; 
 and the use of the very language of the Apocalypse, 
 though unconsciously and undesignedly. Now the pro- 
 fessed object of this Council, we read, was the exaltation 
 of the Church, and the extirpation of heresy and heretics, 
 or, in Apocalyptic language, "the death of the witnesses." 
 The Waldenses of Piedmont and the Lollards of England 
 were declared, at that Council, to be already exterminated. 
 The Bohemians, it was said, alone remained. The Bo- 
 hemians were therefore summoned at the 8th session of 
 the Council, in the year 1513, to appear and plead, in 
 person or by deputy, on the 5th of May, 1514, in the 
 forum, or the broad street, or market-place at Rome, 
 before the representatives of all peoples and nations and 
 kindreds and tongues. The Waldenses, it was allowed, 
 were extirpated, the Lollards in England were declared 
 to be silenced ; the only heretics that remained Avere the 
 Bohemians, and these were thus summoned with a year's 
 notice to appear before the Council on May 5th, 1514. 
 Did they do so ? Luther appeared at Worms and entered 
 his eloquent protest in the face of all opposition. Huss 
 also appeared at Constance ; but such was the depression 
 of the witnesses of Christ at this time, that not one wit- 
 ness, in person or by representation, appeared on the 5th 
 of May, 1514, to testify for Christ, and against the super- 
 stitions of the Papacy. Not a mouth was opened, not a 
 wing fluttered. The testimony of the witnesses was 
 suppressed, and the orator of the Council, after the 
 heretics had been summoned and no response or appear- 
 ance made, ascended the pulpit, and pronounced, amid 
 the applause and plaudits of the assembled bishops, 
 " Jam nemo reclamat, nullus obsistit " " Not one pro- 
 tests, not one opposes," i. e. no heretic appears, heresy is
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 191 
 
 extinct. Here, then, we have the heretics summoned to 
 appear in the year 1514, on the 5th of May; on their 
 non-appearance on that day, the Council, by a public act, 
 writes their epitaph proclaims their special testimony 
 finished declares that there was not one ready to appear 
 before them and attest the truth of their creed. 
 
 This I hold to be the evidence of " the death of the 
 witnesses ;" there being complete and concurrent evi- 
 dence that their testimony was silenced. The two wit- 
 nesses were slain. 
 
 It is added, " they of the nations," i. e. their repre- 
 sentatives, " shall not suffer their dead bodies to be 
 buried." Now, what was part of the sentence of the 
 Church of Rome on heretics, not only in this Council, 
 but in the third and fourth Lateran and in previous 
 Councils ? It was, that heretics should be denied Chris- 
 tian burial a prescription borrowed from Paganism. 
 The Council of Constance, for instance, ordered Wic- / 
 liffe's body to be exhumed and burned. The ashes of / 
 John Huss were cast into the Lake of Constance they j 
 were too impure to be honoured with the rites and cere- 1 
 monies of Christian burial ; and some of whom we have 
 recently read in the papers, and whose names have there- 
 fore gained an unhappy notoriety, have thus shown 
 themselves the successors not of Christ, but of Antichrist, 
 inasmuch as they have refused to bury the bodies of the 
 saints of God, because they had not been baptized ac- 
 cording to the formularies which they prefer in adminis- 
 tering Christian baptism. 
 
 Thus the Lateran Council pronounced the death of the 
 witnesses. It also decreed that the bodies of heretics 
 should not have Christian burial ; and thus unconsciously 
 drew up ecclesiastical canons which remain to this day 
 as illustrative commentaries upon this passage in the 
 Apocalypse, " They of the kindreds, and nations, and 
 people, and tongues, shall not suffer their bodies to be 
 put in graves." 
 
 It is stated in the next place, in this chapter, " They 
 that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and 
 make merry, and shall send gifts one to another ; because 
 these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the
 
 192 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 earth." That is, they shall be so delighted that the 
 heretics are extirpated, and their testimony extinguished, 
 that they "will make merry and send congratulatory gifts 
 one to another." I open the page of history, and there I 
 read that Pope Leo, the reigning Pontiff, received splen- 
 did gifts from various realms, and especially from the 
 king of Portugal, with congi-atulations that Rome was 
 now supreme, and the Pope conferred on that king in 
 return half the Eastern world. At the close of this very 
 Council of Lateran, which pronounced the epitaph of the 
 witnesses, the most splendid fetes and the most luxurious 
 dinners were given toasts were drunk eloquent 
 speeches were made congratulations the most fervent 
 were expressed, and the special subject of joy, says the 
 historian, was the total reduction of the heretics, and 
 healing of the French schism : " And they that dwell 
 upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, 
 and shall send gifts one to another ; because these two 
 prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth." 
 Dean Waddington, an able historian of the Church, says, 
 "At this moment the pillars of the Papal strength 
 seemed visible and palpable, and Rome surveyed them 
 with exultation from her golden palaces." " The assem- 
 bled princes and prelates separated from the Council 
 with complacency, confidence, and mutual congratulations 
 on the peace, unity, and purity of the Church." 
 
 Now, then, we have -seen the death of the witnesses of 
 Christ we have heard the echoes of the congratulations 
 of the Apostacy ; but those congratulations were as short- 
 lived as they were impious : the Spirit of God had writ- 
 ten, and Popes must come down from their thrones to 
 help to fulfil it "They shall stand again upon their 
 feet" they shall experience a resurrection, and hear the 
 invitation of Him that consecrated their hearts by his 
 grace, and gave them their commission in his word, 
 " Come up hither." Is there, then, in fact, any thing that 
 fulfils the prophecy of their resurrection, as close, clear, 
 and conclusive as that which we have adduced, to prove 
 the fulfilment of their martyrdom and death ? I quote 
 not only from writers of the 19th, but from an historian 
 of an earlier date. Raynaldus, the Romish annalist,
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 193 
 
 says : " How ill the laws against heretics were ob- 
 served, appears from the great spread of Luther's heresy 
 very soon after the Council separated." And Mr. Cun- 
 inghame of Lainshaw remarks : " At the commence- 
 ment of the 16th century, Europe reposed in the deep 
 sleep of spiritual death, under the iron yoke of the Pa- 
 pacy, but suddenly, in one of the universities of Germany, 
 the voice of an obscure monk was heard, the sound of 
 which rapidly filled Germany, Saxony, and Europe itself, 
 shaking the very foundations of Papal power, and arous- 
 ing men from the lethargy of ages." How does the 
 chronology of prophecy and history agree ? Most strik- 
 ingly. We are told that the time during which the wit- 
 nesses were to lie unburied was three and a half pro- 
 phetical days, or, literally, three years and a half, at 
 the end of which they were to rise from the dead. The 
 Council proclaimed on May 5th, A. D. 1514, "Nemo re- 
 clamat, nullus obsistit," which is substantially, " Heresy 
 is extinguished ;" this we have seen was the death of the 
 witnesses. On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther made 
 the first proclamation of the gospel, by posting his theses 
 upon the gates of the church of Wittemberg on that very 
 day. The number of years from 1514 to 1517 is pre- 
 cisely three ; from May 5th to October 31st, is precisely 
 180 days, or half a literal year. From the period, there- 
 fore, at which the death of the witnesses was proclaimed, 
 and their epitaph was written, till the moment that their 
 resurrection took place, there elapsed precisely three 
 years and a half. " Great fear," we are told, " fell upon 
 them which saw them ;" not on the representatives at 
 the Council, for they made merry ; and Leo, too, thought 
 it was the work of a foolish monk the gambols of a 
 German friar, that the very smell of the olden weapons 
 of Rome the fire and the faggot would quickly extin- 
 guish ; but he knew not, as I have showed, the metal of 
 the man. Tetzel, Cajetan, and Eck trembled as they 
 listened to Martin Luther : it was literally true that 
 " great fear came upon them" they believed that the 
 day of the glory of Rome was gone ; they thought they 
 heard from afar the intimations of its fall ; they fancied
 
 194 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 that already they were listening to the footsteps of its 
 departing glory ; and again, they literally trembled as 
 they listened to Martin Luther. Pope Adrian exclaimed, 
 A.D. 1523, as if to illustrate the prophecy, "The preachers 
 Huss and Jerome are now alive again in the person of 
 Martin Luther." True it was, the great deception of 
 ages was to be now unveiled the Apostacy was set in the 
 light of that truth which depicts all things truly the 
 doctrines of the gospel began to spread like summer 
 lightning from cloud to cloud, till Luther and his fellow 
 Reformers in 1530, just at the close of the Council of 
 Augsburg, united at Smalcald, and proclaimed the iden- 
 tity of the Reformers with the medieval witnesses of the 
 East and West, by calling themselves PROTESTANTS, 
 (pro and testis,} that is, the Witnesses.
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 
 THEIR ASCENSION. 
 
 " And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God 
 
 entered into them, and they stood upon their feet ; and great 
 
 fear fell upon them which saw them. 
 " 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. 
 " And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth 
 
 part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men 
 
 seven thousand : and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory 
 
 to the God of heaven. 
 " The second woe is past ; and, behold, the third woe cometh 
 
 quickly." REV. xi. 11 14. 
 
 I PRESUME that many who are assembled together this 
 evening have heard the previous Lectures on this most 
 interesting subject : I presume, too, that you are satis- 
 fied with the grounds on which I have fixed the chro- 
 nology of this scene in the Apocalypse, and that you 
 have shared with me in the satisfaction I felt when I first 
 perused the proofs of the fulfilment of it, and became 
 convinced that the witnesses are that illustrious and 
 luminous line of Christian martyrs who, beginning with 
 the age of Augustine, terminated their testimony for 
 a season in the greater glories of the Reformation. 
 
 Some of the points in last evening's Lecture I cannot 
 but recapitulate. 
 
 First, the witnesses were not two individuals, but a 
 succession of individuals. Secondly, the number, two, is 
 specified, because, in the Mosaic economy, two witnesses 
 o 2
 
 196 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 were the fewest that constituted conclusive evidence ; 
 and they were two, to show that the witnessing Church 
 Avas reduced to its least possible number consistent with 
 a valid testimony. I stated that these witnesses were 
 emphatically called the witnesses of Christ witnesses 
 of his eternal Deity of the perfection of his sacrifice 
 to his intransmissible priesthood and to his promise 
 that he will come again. 
 
 These witnesses were to be killed. As the wit- 
 nesses were a succession of individuals, or, in other 
 words, represented under a figurative form, so, in con- 
 sonance with this, I said their death must be a figura- 
 tive death also. In the year 1514, the last links of 
 the line the Waldenses were almost extirpated the 
 Lollards in England were entirely silenced, and the last 
 echoes of protest lingered among the Bohemians. The 
 Lateran Council assembled on the 5th of May, 1514 
 assembled expressly for the purpose of exalting the 
 Church, and exterminating heresy. The Bohemians, 
 the Waldenses, the Vaudois, and the Lollards had been 
 summoned to appear at that Council, and to defend their 
 principles or renounce them. When Luther was sum- 
 moned, he appeared : when Huss was summoned to 
 Constance, he obeyed also ; but when these witnesses, 
 the last remains of the upholders of Christian truth, 
 were summoned to the Lateran, on May 5th, 1514, so 
 weakened was their strength so crushed their spirit 
 so truly dead that the orator of the Council mounted 
 the pulpit, and amid the plaudits of the assembled 
 cardinals and bishops, cried " Nullus reclamat, nemo 
 obsistit" "there is no one to appear;" or, if I might 
 explain it, " heresy is extinguished, the Church is 
 triumphant, exclusive, and supreme." 
 
 I expressed my belief that this was the death of the wit- 
 nesses. It is then stated that their dead bodies should not 
 be buried. I showed you how this confirms the application 
 of their death to the epoch I have supposed, for the very 
 language of the Romish Councils in dealing with the 
 bodies of dead heretics is here employed in the book of 
 Revelation. It was the decision of that Council that the
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 197 
 
 dead bodies of heretics should not have Christian burial. 
 I showed you therefore that the circumstance, of which 
 you must have read in the papers a few years back, of 
 certain individuals refusing to give Christian burial to 
 those who had not been baptized according to their for- 
 mula, is not at all a novel thing, nor is there any thing 
 strange in it, nor even unexpected, from the principles 
 professed and held by the party. This part of their 
 weapons was borrowed from the arsenal of those cham- 
 pions from whom they had derived their principles the 
 canons and decretals of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 Thus these witnesses of Christ were not allowed Chris- 
 tian burial. They were proscribed, and denied all in- 
 tercourse, and so for three years and a half, called 
 prophetically three days and a half, they were almost 
 unknown, unseen, and unheard. The two witnesses lay 
 dead and unburied. They were so treated because they 
 witnessed against that apostacy to whom all consecrated 
 earth and funeral rites pertained. 
 
 But, it is said, that after three years and a half they 
 should experience a resurrection. Is there in history 
 any corresponding fulfilment of this ? Let us see : on the 
 31st October, 1517, Martin Luther starts into view as if 
 he had dropped from the sky, posts his ninety-five theses 
 upon the gates of the parish church of Wittemberg, then 
 the only mode of public advertisement, starts the slum- 
 bering echoes of all but extinguished truth, wakens 
 Europe from its night-mare sleep ; summoned from their 
 graves the witnesses that were slain and they received 
 life from heaven, started to their feet, and raised again 
 their testimony after three and a half years' silence, in 
 the hearing of amazed and awed Christendom. Count 
 from the 5th of May, 1514, to the 3 1st of October, 1517, 
 and you will find it precisely three years and a half. 
 
 Thus, then, we have the death, the burial, and the 
 resurrection of the witnesses. But I must notice another 
 point of contact between the prophecy and history: 
 when the witnesses were slain, and when the Council 
 had separated, all believing that heresy was extinct, and
 
 198 ' APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 hence, " they of the people, and kindreds, and tongues, 
 and nations shall rejoice over them, and make merry, 
 and shall send gifts one to another ; " as it was written 
 in verse 9. It is not said the people, but " they of the 
 people" it involves the idea of representation, IK ruv 
 Xativ, that is, the representatives of the people and the 
 tribes. Here, then, we have described the feelings cher- 
 ished by the delegates or representatives at that Coun- 
 cil, and the mode in which they manifested those feelings. 
 When the Lateran Council which pronounced the death 
 of the witnesses was dissolved, brilliant fetes were cele- 
 brated by its members at Rome ; cardinals and bishops, 
 and popes and abbots, and princes and high laymen, its 
 members, assembled in all the splendour of costume in 
 all "the pomp of Papal circumstance:" and at these 
 fetes toasts were drunk congratulations were expressed 
 and all bore on the point more or less, that the Church 
 at last had triumphed, that the heresy of the Bohemians 
 and the Vaudois was extinguished for ever, and so " they 
 of the nations rejoiced over their dead bodies, and made 
 merry." 
 
 It is also said that they should "send gifts one to 
 another." Historians who have investigated the era, 
 state that kings and emperors transmitted to the Pope 
 magnificent presents, and accompanied these presents 
 with expressions of their great satisfaction that the 
 Church was triumphant, and at peace. Three years 
 and a half, however, elapsed, and what they called heresy 
 appeared again, personated in that noble character 
 that true hero Martin Luther, the solitary monk that 
 shook the world who revived the protest of his fathers, 
 and bequeathed us the legacy of an unshackled Bible 
 a glorious gospel an independent and emancipated 
 Church.* 
 
 * I may, in this place, refer to " Luther, a poem," by my friend 
 Robert Montgomery, a man of great and true genius, whose latter 
 writings in prose are full of original and powerful thought. His 
 poem on Luther needs compression, but passages of great force 
 and striking poetic beauty abound in it.
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 199 
 
 I will now follow out my remarks upon the witnesses, 
 by explaining what is here stated of their standing on 
 their feet, their ascending up to heaven in a cloud, and 
 their enemies beholding them. 
 
 First of all, it will be asked, what is meant by the ex- 
 pression " they ascended up to heaven in a cloud ?" This 
 is not the heaven in which God's throne is : and for 
 this reason, among others, their enemies beheld them 
 after they had ascended ; which they could not have 
 done if the ascent had been into literal heaven. It is to 
 be interpreted in accordance with the great principles 
 on which we have hitherto proceeded the recognition 
 of a figurative phraseology, borrowed partly from the 
 centuries as they flowed and circumstances to which the 
 book refers, and partly from the usages, habits, and 
 expressions of the Levitical economy. I find in Isaiah 
 xiv. 13, an explanation of the expression ascending 
 into heaven ; when the proud despot says, " I will as- 
 cend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars 
 of God ; I will sit also upon the mount of the congre- 
 gation, in the sides of the north" that is, I will possess 
 supreme power, I will exercise unlimited despotism, I 
 will occupy the loftiest pinnacle of pre-eminence and of 
 power that the heart of ambition can crave or the 
 
 " In thy heart, heroic England, long 
 
 May Luther's voice and fcuther's spirit live 
 
 Unsilenced and unshamed. Thou peerless home 
 
 Of liberty and laws, of arts and arms, 
 
 Of learning, love, and eloquence divine, 
 
 Where Shakspeare dream'd, and sightless Milton soar'd, 
 
 Where heroes bled, and martyrs for the truth 
 
 Have died the burning death. 
 
 Land of the beautiful, the brave, the free, 
 
 Never, oh, never ! round thy yielded soul, 
 
 May damning Popery its rust-worn chain 
 
 Of darkness rivet : 
 
 Without the Bible, Britain's life-blood chills, 
 
 And curdles. 
 
 Reft of her Bible, not a drop remains 
 
 Of holy life-blood in the nation's heart." 
 
 ROBT. MONTGOMERY'S LUTHER, p. 346.
 
 200 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 imagination can conceive. I understand, therefore, by 
 the expression, " they ascended up to heaven," that the 
 witnesses, i, e. the witnessing Churches, or those faith- 
 ful ones to whom I have referred, obtained great civil 
 and national power were raised from the depths of de- 
 pression to the very height of eminence and power. I 
 am not asking your approval or disapproval, or ex- 
 pressing my own, of investing the Church with political 
 power ; I do not ask whether or not you coincide with 
 the opinion that the Church should be established this 
 is a question which does not enter into this subject ; all 
 I state is the simple fact, that to ascend into heaven, ac- 
 cording to Apocalyptic phraseology, means to be elevated 
 to the possession of civil power, and that facts, recorded 
 in the pages of historians, bear me out in this interpret- 
 ation of the passage. What, then, was the historical oc- 
 currence that confirms the assertion in the Apocalypse ? 
 Soon after the prescriptive decree of Augsburg, what 
 was called the Pacification of Nuremberg was passed : at 
 the moment that that Pacification was passed, in the 
 16th century, the period at which we are now arrived, 
 the decree went forth through the length and breadth of 
 Germany, the first for a thousand years, that Protest- 
 antism should not be crushed by prescriptive penalties, 
 nor Protestants exterminated by the sword. In other 
 words, toleration took place where proscription had 
 been before ; and the Church of Rome, so far as 
 the civil power was concerned, was driven to contend 
 with Protestantism by the use of argument, and to 
 sheath, at least for a season, the sword of persecution. 
 Principal Robertson, the great historian, and a more 
 illustrious historian than a divine, more accurate in 
 his facts than scriptural in his theology, makes the ob- 
 servation, " From having been viewed hitherto only 
 as a religious sect, the Protestants came now, after the 
 Pacification of Nuremberg, to be considered as a poli- 
 tical body of no small importance." And although the 
 death of Luther seemed to be an interruption of their 
 prosperity, and the assembling of the Council of Trent
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 201 
 
 in 1552, which sat for ten years and upwards, seemed 
 to threaten their extermination again ; yet the peace of 
 Passau, which took place in 1552, not only confirmed 
 the toleration of Protestants, but also admitted them to 
 civil power, and invested them with political privileges, 
 and made them constituent members of the Supreme 
 Imperial Chamber. Here, then, the first time for a 
 thousand years, truth is recognised, or at least tolerated, 
 by the kings and the powers of the earth : from being 
 crushed and trodden down by the iron heel of tyranny, 
 Christianity stood forth emancipated from its shackles 
 protected by the sceptre and nestling under the shelter 
 of the imperial throne, adding by its contact new splen- 
 dour to the crown and new stability and strength to the 
 sceptre. Such, then, is the fulfilment of this prophecy. 
 The witnesses ascended up to heaven, they not only rose 
 in the fact of their resurrection from the depths of the 
 earth, but rose in the fact of their recognition by the 
 "powers that be" to great honour. 
 
 It is added, " their enemies beheld them." This ex- 
 presses emotion. What does it mean? It is this, the 
 priests and prelates of Rome, who saw their ascent, were 
 enraged at the spectacle. What could be more terrible 
 to the Church of Rome than to see the Bible open, in 
 spite of their efforts to shut it palaces admit it kings 
 listening to Protestant preachers the great ones of the 
 earth beginning to think that Rome was the Apostacy 
 that the monk was right that Protestantism was true. 
 They beheld it with envy, with hatred, with agitation, 
 and with alarm. 
 
 It is then added, "there was a great earthquake." 
 Now we explain the expression, as we have explained 
 similar expressions used in the Apocalypse, as being not 
 a literal earthquake merely, though this is true, but a 
 moral or a spiritual one. We then ask, was there any 
 thing approaching this in historical fact ? Soon the ful- 
 filment of it appeared. There took place a great schism 
 in the Popedom a complete disruption in the power and 
 dominion of the Roman Catholic hierarchy a moral 
 earthquake Saxony, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark,
 
 202 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 renounced the supremacy of the tiara, and rallied round 
 their own national altars, and raised a wall between them 
 and the Popedom that all the artifices of the Jesuits have 
 not been able to undermine. 
 
 It is added, in the next place, that " the tenth part of 
 the city fell." I have already intimated, what I shall 
 have to explain when the proper time for explanation 
 shall arrive, that the Roman empire under the Popedom 
 was divided into ten great divisions. This was prefigured 
 in Daniel ; it is also expressly stated in the Apocalypse : 
 and one of the greatest of the ten kingdoms was Great 
 Britain. It was one of the ten sections into which the 
 Popedom was divided. Now it is here stated, that the 
 tenth part of the Popedom fell. Can we be ignorant of 
 a fact in history that illustrates this part of the prophecy ? 
 Great Britain separated from the Popedom at the Re- 
 formation ; the most brilliant gem in the tiara was then 
 torn from its socket, and lost to the Pope, I hope, I pray, 
 forever and ever. By whom was it thus severed ? By as 
 bad a man as ever walked the earth, and as corrupt and as 
 wicked a king as ever swayed a sceptre, which Roman 
 Catholics will tell you, when they are tired of repeating 
 that our religion is the religion of Martin Luther, though 
 surely it is not a greater shame to have the religion of 
 Martin Luther than to have the religion of Hildebrand, 
 or Alexander VI., or Innocent III. At the same time 
 our religion, as I showed you, is not the religion of 
 Luther. It was the creed but not the creation of that 
 man, and if Luther were to say one thing, and an apostle 
 were to say the contrary, we should cast Luther's opinion 
 to the winds, and receive the word of the apostle. Henry 
 VIII., then, I say, was the person who awoke the vibra- 
 tions of the earthquake that detached England from the 
 influence of Rome. Roman Catholics taunt us with 
 Henry VIII. as one of our founders, but they must surely 
 forget that never did a devouter Papist count his beads, 
 or confess his sins, or be shrived, than Henry VIH. All 
 he meant to do was this : that the reigning Pontiff should 
 not be Pope, and that he himself should be Pope in his 
 stead. He renounced not Popery, but the Pope. His own
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 203 
 
 supremacy, not that of truth, was his aim. He severed 
 England from Rome. He did not sanctify it for God. 
 Hatred to the Pope, not attachment to truth, led him. He 
 renounced superstition one day, and embraced it the 
 next. He burned Roman Catholics for believing tran- 
 substantiation, and Protestants for doubting, disputing, 
 or denying it. At the approach of death Henry VIII. 
 had an altar erected by his bed-side, and a priest to offer 
 up the sacrifice of the mass, and say prayers to deliver 
 his soul from purgatory. He was used as an instrument, 
 and that was all. So was Cyrus. So was Alexander. 
 So was Napoleon. There was a great wall between the 
 sinner and his God, and it mattered little whether that 
 wall was shattered by the lightning's flash, or upheaved 
 by the earthquake, or blasted by gunpowder, or battered 
 down by the battering-ram ; it was removed, in order 
 that communion might be restored between the guilty 
 and his God, between the sinner and his Saviour. 
 
 But while Henry VIII. thus constituted by his act 
 the earthquake, it was reserved for Edward VI. to in- 
 troduce positive truth instead of mere negative protest ; 
 and after Edward VI. we read of the noble noble as 
 far as they were Protestant the noble efforts of Eliza- 
 beth, to help forward the great and blessed truths of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Not only England thus separated from the Popedom, 
 but Scotland also. In 1560 the Reformation was estab- 
 lished in Scotland. And in their respective separa- 
 tions you cannot but notice how the two great divisions 
 of the empire were added to the possessions of the Church 
 of the gospel by different processes. In England it 
 came from the throne downward, and descended slowly 
 to the mass of the people, and it carried with it in its 
 descent a portion of the medium through which it came. 
 In Scotland the Reformation passed like an electric spark 
 through the masses of people ; it shot upward, illuminat- 
 ing and agitating as it rose ; it moved from the basis of 
 the pyramid till it gleamed with heavenly coruscation 
 on the loftiest pinnacle of its apex. In England the
 
 204 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Reformation was achieved by degrees, and many things 
 retained to conciliate as many as possible, and one or 
 two things, as the Absolution Service, most unhappily. 
 In Scotland, the Reformation completely triumphed ; 
 and whatever may be our defects in Scotland, we have 
 not much Popery. It is true we do sometimes quarrel 
 and yet these quarrels show the depth and earnestness 
 of our religious principles ; men rarely quarrel about 
 mere trifles there must be something that is felt to be 
 important in order to originate a dispute. Our quarrels 
 arise, not from hatred to each other, but if by mis- 
 take, yet really from love to our Bible, our religion, 
 and our God. In England they had the good taste 
 to spare, what they had in Scotland the Protestant zeal 
 in many instances to destroy, those ancient abbeys and 
 convents, and those beautiful cathedrals those silent 
 poems which seem as if the very stones of the earth, 
 bursting into blossom, sent fragrant incense to the 
 skies. My poetic feelings have sometimes predominated, 
 and made me congratulate this land that its cathedrals 
 had been spared ; and this same feeling has borne me to 
 Scotland, and made me almost weep that more of those 
 beautiful cathedrals were not left to be consecrated by 
 truth, as is the case with St. Machar's, St. Mungo's, 
 and St. Giles's, and to adorn and still beautify the land ; 
 but when my poetry evaporated, and my Christian- 
 ity predominated, and I recollected that if you want 
 me to point to the spot where spiritual religion is cer- 
 tainly not most aided where the hard-working parish 
 ministers are worst paid and where the flood of supersti- 
 tion, should it come again, will find every receptacle ready 
 for its reflux, you force me, in spite of all my poetic sym- 
 pathies, to point to the vicinity of our ancient cathedrals. 
 The truth is, cathedrals are not adapted to Protestant 
 worship except by the process we have adopted in Scot- 
 land, turning the choir into one parish church, and the 
 nave into another a suggestion they have partially 
 adopted at Chichester. Knox put forth a strong hand, 
 and gave perhaps too heavy a blow he was not satisfied
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 205 
 
 with driving the monks out of Scotland, he brought 
 down their convents too he pulled down the rooks' 
 nests, as he said, and the rooks fled away. Yet it was 
 the convents, not the cathedrals, he thought were irre- 
 claimable. He wished, and was not able, to spare all 
 the latter. Whatever we have in Scotland, however, 
 we have very little of Popery, and therefore when you 
 blame us for our quarrels, praise us for our Protestant- 
 ism when you denounce Knox as a Goth, forget not 
 he was a Christian. When you denounce him as an 
 architectural Hun, think also of the blessings he was 
 instrumental in bequeathing to us and to our children, 
 and our children's children. 
 
 Another expression occurs in the passage, which leads 
 us yet more plainly to fix the chronology of the event 
 as we have done, viz. the statement, that there was not 
 only an earthquake, but also that there were killed or 
 slain of men seven thousand. In the original the ex- 
 pression is "seven chiliads, the names of men." On 
 referring to the Old Testament Scriptures, I find that 
 the chiliads denoted princedoms, under the domination 
 or rule of a prince. Thus the very word is used in a 
 passage in the Prophet Micah, "But thou, Bethlehem 
 Ephratah, though thou be little among" in our transla- 
 tion, " the thousands" it is literally, " among the chiliads 
 of Judah." When the Evangelist quotes the prediction 
 of the Prophet, he says, " least among the princes of 
 Juda." I am therefore carried to the conclusion, that 
 the seven chiliads that were slain were provinces, each 
 province under its ruler, its supreme magistrate or 
 governing officer. Do we find, then, seven provinces or 
 princedoms split from the Papal ecclesiastical tyranny 
 by this great earthquake ? We do ; for after England 
 and Scotland had followed in the wake of Germany, and 
 reflected from their shores also the echoes of the voice 
 of Martin Luther, we read, what completely confirms 
 the prediction of the Apocalypse, that the Seven Pro- 
 vinces of the Netherlands, which had heretofore been 
 subject to Spain, and adhering to the Papacy, began 
 to feel the earthquake. They were assailed by the
 
 206 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Spaniards in a bloody war of thirty-seven years without 
 success, and at last their independence was declared. 
 These Seven Provinces, under the ruling dukes or 
 princes, separated from the Popedom at this very period, 
 and formed themselves into the Protestant republic of Hol- 
 land, next to Britain the most glorious protesting nation 
 against the corruptions and superstitions of the Papacy. 
 Then it is said, they, that is, the Romanists, " were 
 affrighted." That is, those who were left by the seces- 
 sion of those countries, and nations, and empires, that 
 seceded from the Roman Catholic Church. We read, 
 accordingly, that the Romanists, when they recollected 
 the cruelties they had perpetrated when the remem- 
 brance of their crimes was brought vividly before them, 
 and when, in connexion with this, they saw the hated 
 Protestants raised to civil and political power, they were 
 affrighted; they expected that the day of vengeance, 
 the hour of retaliation, was come, and having been 
 themselves accustomed to act upon the principle, " an 
 eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," and judging of Pro- 
 testants by their own spirit, they thought that Protest- 
 ants would punish, persecute, proscribe, and burn those 
 who had so treated them in times that were gone. It is 
 true, and it ought to be admitted, that the great Pro- 
 testant nations omitted, in some respects, to act in the 
 spirit of the religion which they had embraced. It is 
 too true, that each nation stole or borrowed from Rome 
 too many of the weapons that are now peculiar to Rome ; 
 yet one wonders not at it, for at this very period, such 
 was the alarm of the Protestant nations at the reflux of 
 Popery, and with Popery, persecution, that penal laws 
 of the most bitter and stringent description were re- 
 corded in the statute books of every country, in self- 
 defence ; and even the Reformers themselves sanctioned 
 the incorporation of such prescriptive laws. For in- 
 stance, it ought not to be disguised, for we must never 
 try to serve the cause of truth by the concealment or de- 
 nial of facts ; truth will always stand, it will never suffer by 
 the avowal of facts, that Cranmer sanctioned the burn- 
 ing of two Anabaptists. John Knox, I need not tell you,
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 207 
 
 believed, and preached, and wrote, that all priests that 
 said mass, and all Roman Catholics that were present, 
 ought to be put to death. Roman Catholics will tell you 
 so, and when they so tell you, admit and regret it, but be 
 sure at the same time to ask them, where did they learn 
 these tenets ? Cranmer was once a Roman Catholic priest 
 Knox was also brought up a Roman Catholic priest 
 they imbibed persecution with their mother's milk it 
 was in their catechism, their creeds and horn-books. The 
 wonder to me is, not that the Reformers retained so much 
 of Popery, but that they shook off so much. The wonder 
 to me is, not that they retained so much of its spirit, but 
 that they got rid of so much of its spirit : and when 
 Rome twits us with the proscriptions of Knox, she 
 ought to recollect that she was the nursery in which 
 Knox was taught to cherish these proscriptions. Here, 
 too, is an important difference : we Protestants are get- 
 ting rid of our prescriptive laws. I was therefore delighted 
 when I heard of some penal laws, absurd and inopera- 
 tive in themselves, cancelled from our statute book. I 
 rejoiced that such proscriptions, and pains, and penal- 
 ties were repealed. How absurd to retain an Act, that 
 if any Roman Catholic priest travelled more than a 
 certain distance from his residence on the sabbath, he 
 should be put in prison ! I believe it is but two years 
 since that was expunged, and if there be any remaining 
 penalties of the same description in our statute book, 
 I should rejoice to hear that they were expunged also. 
 Here, then, is evidence of our improvement ; but when 
 we act so generously, ought we not to expect the Church 
 of Rome to reciprocate our kindness ? Does she do so ? 
 What is the oath of every Roman Catholic bishop ? 
 There is to be a Roman Catholic archbishop of West- 
 minster, what is his oath ? I have in my possession 
 the oath taken by every Roman Catholic bishop at his 
 consecration, and one clause in it is, (Dr. Wiseman and 
 every Roman Catholic bishop in England has taken this 
 oath,) "I will persecute and attack all heretics and dis- 
 senters." They avow their intention to burn heretics. 
 A Popish prelate, when he presides at the auto-da-fe,
 
 208 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 acts consistently. I like to see men act consistently 
 with their principles, and if the Romish Church will 
 act honestly, and carry out her principles to full prac- 
 tice, we shall then learn at last what Popery is. While, 
 then, we are blotting out all that is penal in our statute 
 book, I should wish to convey one solitary petition to that 
 Pope who reigns in the hearts of all Roman Catholics, 
 who is called the Reforming Pope, and who seems to 
 have a desire for civil freedom, which we cannot but 
 commend. I would explain my petition thus : When 
 Dr. Wiseman comes to London, he builds his chapel, 
 worships in it according to his own views he sum- 
 mons his meetings, (I have attended some of them,) 
 circulates their tracts, makes speeches against Protest- 
 antism, says strong things in favour of Romanism, and 
 nobody interferes with them ; I should denounce the 
 practice of the man as altogether contrary to the princi- 
 ples of his Bible who should try to interfere with them. 
 I would give them full, unfettered, unrestricted freedom. 
 Liberty of conscience to friend and foe is a principle of 
 ours. But now let me ask of Pius IX. so generous, 
 so liberal, so reforming that he will allow and I am 
 sure there is not an individual in Exeter Hall who will 
 not accede to my proposal, when I make it, for contri- 
 butions to enable us to do so that he will allow a Pro- 
 testant church (let him make a selection from all the 
 denominations in England ; let him choose the very 
 worst ; it will be far preferable to his own) to be built 
 in Rome within the walls let him select, or suffer, any 
 preacher out of a list I will give him, to preach in it ; 
 and then let him allow me to spread the tracts of the Tract 
 Society, in which there is nothing sectarian or denomi- 
 national let me ask this extent of freedom will he 
 grant it ? No ! He never has granted it ; he never can 
 grant it consistently with his principles ; and I should 
 say, the doom of the Popedom is sealed the moment 
 that you hear that Protestant chapels and preachers are 
 tolerated in Rome. Popery cannot afford it ; it would not 
 do there at all. We can afford to be generous without 
 loss or compromise. But Popery cannot afford to be
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 209 
 
 tolerant ; to permit the propagation of truth would be 
 an act of suicide. 
 
 There is one point more in the history of the wit- 
 nesses, and a very beautiful and interesting one it is. 
 It is said, when the witnesses ascended into heaven, the 
 remnant of the Apostacy that saw their advancement, 
 trembled at the spectacle, and, it is added, they gave 
 " glory to the God of heaven." Unfortunately, this is 
 not an accurate and true translation of the passage I 
 have read. Every scholar acquainted with the idiom 
 and structure of the Greek will allow that the significa- 
 tion is, " they" (i. e. the Papists) " were affrighted," and 
 they, the witnesses, (not the Papists,) " gave glory to the 
 God of heaven." This is an historical description of 
 the affrighted Romanists : side by side with a descrip- 
 tion of the feelings which actuated the elevated and 
 triumphant witnesses. The assertion, then, is, that 
 after their elevation to power after the close of their 
 long and painful depression after they had come to 
 worship in splendid churches, no longer in dens and caves 
 of the earth, proscribed, persecuted, and trampled upon 
 they, the Christians, felt that all the glory (and this 
 is the grand peculiarity of Protestant truth) was to be 
 given, not to Luther, who had proved so indomitable a 
 champion not to Knox, who had been faithful among 
 the faithless many not to Calvin, so evangelical, so elo- 
 quent not to any of that illustrious line of witnesses 
 that preceded them ; but they gave the glory of an un- 
 fettered Bible an emancipated church a fully preached 
 gospel unto Him to whom the glory alone was due, the 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 You will see, also, a beautiful instance in this of what 
 we have called the allusive character of the records in 
 the Apocalypse : when St. John speaks of some great 
 evangelical truth, as strongly illustrated at some par- 
 ticular period in the history of the Church, it always 
 conveys, by allusion or by contrast, the exhibition of 
 some rampant and predominating heresy. .Now, when it 
 is said the Protestants gave glory to God, it conveys, by 
 allusion, the painful fact that the Roman Catholics, ever
 
 210 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 as they had gained an object they had prayed for, or 
 attained the success they had anticipated, gave the 
 glory to Saints, or to the Virgin Mary. Saint Patrick 
 used to get the glory in Ireland, Saint Andrew in Scot- 
 land, and Saint George in England, and the Virgin 
 every where. And if at this moment you cross the sea, 
 and enter the first port in Belgium, (and I am sure 
 that every Englishman who visits the continent will re- 
 turn to his own country, and bless God that he was born 
 in a land of liberty, and has been made acquainted with 
 the Bible,) you will find in each of their most beautiful 
 cathedrals a huge statue of the Virgin Mary you will 
 see silver hearts nailed to the pedestal on which she 
 stands, giving her the glory of cures and deliverances. 
 I recollect, too, on a visit to the chapel of Jesu Flagelle, 
 which is within five miles of Boulogne, seeing on its 
 walls children's caps and shoes, and crutches, and also 
 model ships and boats hung around the statues of saints 
 and saintesses, and of the Virgin Mary, designed to 
 teach that all the glory of these children's recovery, 
 and of sailors' escape from shipwreck, is to be ascribed 
 to the Virgin. We have, then, I say, here, contrasted 
 with this the fact that the Protestants " gave glory to 
 the God of heaven." Strype, in his preface, among 
 other extracts, gives the following : " Elizabeth, pre- 
 paring her heart, and giving God the glory, was in a few 
 years made strong against her enemies." Strype also 
 gives extracts from a thanksgiving of the English 
 Protestant exiles, called, "Ad Christum Anglorum 
 exultantium 'Ev-^apiffriKov." And on the defeat of 
 the Spanish armada, which came to papalize the 
 Church, as well as overturn our government, it is 
 recorded in history and you are all, I dare say, ac- 
 quainted with this fact that Queen Elizabeth went 
 in procession to St. Paul's, and gave glory to God for 
 this victory. She also caused a medal to be struck, 
 on which was a representation of a fleet beaten by a 
 tempest, and over it the inscription, " He blew with 
 his winds and they were scattered : " and thus the 
 queen gave God all the glory. So many striking facts
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 211 
 
 are surely coincidences with predictions not to be over- 
 looked ; but taken in connexion with all the facts I have 
 adduced on previous occasions, they are surely contribu- 
 tions tending to illustrate the prophecies of this book, 
 and evidences of the truth of the Apocalypse. 
 
 We read that Elizabeth gave glory to God for all the 
 good her realm had realized. And is there not a kindred 
 act this day ? * A nobler and more favoured than Eliza- 
 beth bids us, her loyal subjects, give glory for an unpre- 
 cedented harvest ; not to nothing, as the atheist would 
 say not to sunbeams and raindrops, as the materialist 
 would say nor to Ceres and Jupiter, as the heathen 
 would say nor to saints and to the Virgin Mary, as 
 the Romanist would say but, as England's Queen has 
 said, and as England's Bible echoes, to that God whose 
 smiles gave our corn all its ripeness, and whose goodness 
 has replenished our granaries with all their fulness. 
 The more I think of this, my dear friends, the more I 
 am struck with the interesting coincidence. A queen is 
 ours who has all Elizabeth's principles, without Eliza- 
 beth's persecuting spirit all Elizabeth's Protestantism, 
 without Elizabeth's pride all the splendour of the reign 
 of the Maiden Queen, with all the added glories that are 
 peculiarly her own that Queen Victoria who lives in 
 the hearts, is sustained by the prayers, and embosomed in 
 the piety of her people a Protestant a queen and a 
 mother exemplary and beautiful in all what heart will 
 not pray, GOD SAVE THE QUEEN ? what Christian will 
 refuse to give to the GOD of HEAVEN the glory ? 
 
 I have just exhausted the small portion of Scripture I 
 had selected for this evening's exposition, I am only 
 prevented by the vastness and magnificence of my sub- 
 ject from giving you, what I must reserve for another 
 evening, a sketch of those distinguished witnesses, a 
 cluster and constellation of whom appeared at the Re- 
 formation. I have entered in my notes illustrative ex- 
 tracts explanatory of such witnesses as Melancthon, and 
 Zwingle, and Calvin, and Knox, and others of whom 
 
 * This discourse was delivered in the evening of the General 
 Thanksgiving. 
 
 p 2
 
 212 APOCALYPTIC SKETCIIKS. 
 
 the world was not worthy ; but I must reserve my re- 
 marks upon them for another occasion ; and in the mean 
 time conclude with two or three practical inferences from 
 the history and lineage which we have endeavoured to 
 trace through the mediaeval ages of Europe. 
 
 First of all, this subject leads me to recall to your recol- 
 lection the interesting fact, that there has been no period 
 in the history of the past in which there have not been 
 witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe, and this 
 is a fact for which we ought to be thankful to God, that 
 even in the bosom of the Church of Rome there never 
 was an age tn which there were not some, at least, that 
 trusted in the Saviour, in spite of the enveloping super- 
 stition. I believe that many a tonsured head now rests 
 in Abraham's bosom. I believe that many a poor monk 
 worn down with fasting, girt round with bell-rope, 
 and clothed with rags, was saved because of the truth 
 that penetrated all, and rests in the abodes of peace and 
 blessedness, in which are Augustine and Claude of Turin, 
 and Huss and Jerome of Prague, and Martin Luther 
 and Calvin and John Knox. An interesting specimen 
 of the probability of this is found in a fact recorded iu 
 the graphic history of Merle D'Aubigne. In the year 
 1776, an old building was pulled down at Basle, which 
 had formed part of the ancient convent of the Carthu- 
 sians. In a hole in the wall was found secreted a box, 
 in which a poor Carthusian brother had deposited the 
 following prayer : 
 
 " most merciful God, I know that I can only be 
 saved and satisfy thy righteousness by the merit, the in- 
 nocent suffering and death of thy well beloved Son. 
 Holy Jesus, my salvation is in thy hands. Thou canst 
 not withdraAV the hands of thy love from me, for they 
 have created and redeemed me. Thou hast inscribed 
 my name with a pen of iron, in rich mercy, and so that 
 nothing can efface it, on thy side, thy hands, and thy 
 feet." 
 
 Here was the gospel of Jesus cherished in the midst 
 of a convent ; and who can doubt that that Carthusian 
 lived and died washed in the blood and justified by the
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 213 
 
 righteousness of the blessed Jesus ? But when I admit 
 all this, what does it prove ? Not that the system to 
 which he belonged was true, but that the truth, which 
 that system tries to exclude, just like the light of hea- 
 ven, found, by its penetrating intensity, some nooks and 
 crevices in the Popedom by which it entered and trans- 
 formed by its touch that poor Carthusian brother. The 
 inference that I draw is, not that Popery is true, but 
 that Protestantism can penetrate the darkest dungeon. 
 The inference I draw is, not that the desert was less 
 bleak, but that there were some sweet sheltered flowerets 
 in the midst of that desert, that the frost had not nipped 
 and the simoom had not utterly blasted. Thus, again, we 
 have additional reply to the query, " Where was your 
 Church before Luther ?" If you mean, where were our 
 principles ? we answer, in the Bible : if you mean, where 
 were the exponents of them ? they were in the line of 
 witnesses I have traced, and a few in the bosom of the 
 Church of Rome herself. Our Protestant churches and 
 chapels were not the erection of new buildings, but the 
 purification of the old ones. Let me explain this to you. 
 A broker, the other year, was purchasing pictures in 
 Paris : he found one which was a beautiful painting of 
 the Virgin Mary : he purchased it for a little, hoping to 
 sell it for much. He began to clean the picture, accord- 
 ing to the process that cleaners of paintings employ. In 
 doing so, by accident a little fragment of the countenance 
 of the Virgin scaled off, and he saw where the fragment 
 scaled off something far more beautiful below it. This 
 tempted him to scale off a bit more, and he found it was 
 a master-piece of one of the most illustrious masters, re- 
 presenting the Lord Jesus. Now, what the picture 
 cleaner did to this painting, Martin Luther and John 
 Knox did to the Church at the Reformation. The in- 
 crustation of saints they scraped off. Knox did it often 
 very roughly, but he did it well ; they scraped off the 
 pictures of the saints, and there burst forth, in all its 
 glory, the representation of the Son of God ; and in the 
 back-ground, shining in his light, the Church purchased 
 with his precious blood, " fair as the sun, clear as the 
 moon, and terrible as an army with banners."
 
 214 APOCALTPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 The Church of Christ is to be traced, like a stream 
 that rises in a sandy desert, its parent in the skies, pur- 
 suing its meandering course through many nations, not 
 by its noise, or its breadth, or its brilliancy, but by the 
 rich verdure that it leaves at its margin, as it flows on- 
 ward in its calm and silent course, until it loses itself at 
 last in the mighty and illimitable sea from whence it 
 originally sprung. The Church of Christ is to be traced, 
 not by the glittering dress that clothes its exterior not 
 by the pageantry of cathedral processions not by 
 mitred abbots and tiaraed Popes ; but by its separation 
 from the world by the holiness of its ministers and its 
 faithful ones ; by the stains of the blood which they 
 shed by the clank of their chains by their bones that 
 still lie bleached upon the Cottian Alps ; not by the 
 grandeur of their robes, but by the glory of their prin- 
 ciples not by the splendour they have reflected upon 
 the page of history, but by the blood-bought privileges 
 they have bequeathed to us, their unworthy but their 
 honoured successors. 
 
 The names applied to these witnesses of Christ by 
 historians were, Paulicians, Cathari, Paterines, Albi- 
 geois, Lollards, Wicliffites, Vaudois, Waldenses, Bohe- 
 mians ; but the principles they held were substantially 
 the same Scriptural Protestant Evangelical. They 
 are the succession links in that continuous chain which 
 began with Adam at the fall, and will go onward till the 
 Second Adam comes to restore all things.
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE CHUKCH IN THE WILDERNESS, 
 
 ' And there appeared a great wonder in heaven ; a woman clothed 
 
 with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a 
 
 crown of twelve stars : 
 ' And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to 
 
 be delivered. 
 1 And there appeared another wonder in heaven ; and behold a 
 
 great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven 
 
 crowns upon his heads. 
 1 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did 
 
 cast them to the earth : and the dragon stood before the woman 
 
 which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon 
 
 as it was born. 
 1 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations 
 
 with a rod of iron : and her child was caught up unto God, and 
 
 to his throne. 
 ' And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place 
 
 prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two 
 
 hundred and threescore days. 
 ' And there was war in heaven : Michael and his angels fought 
 
 against the dragon ; and the dragon fought and his angels, 
 ' And prevailed not ; neither was their place found any more in 
 
 heaven. 
 ' And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the 
 
 Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world : he was cast 
 
 out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 
 1 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salva- 
 tion, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power 
 
 of his Christ : for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which 
 
 accused them before our God day and night. 
 ; And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the 
 
 word of their testimony ; and they loved not their lives unto the 
 
 death.
 
 216 Al'OCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 " Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe 
 to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea ! for the devil is come 
 down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he 
 hath but a short time. 
 
 " And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he 
 persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. 
 
 " And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that 
 she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is 
 nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of 
 the serpent. 
 
 " And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the 
 woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. 
 
 " And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her 
 mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of 
 his mouth. 
 
 " And the dragon was wroth Avith the woman, and went to make 
 war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the command- 
 ments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." 
 
 REV. xii. 117. 
 
 WE are about to experience a yet greater pause or break 
 in the continuous history we have heretofore pursued. 
 This chapter does not carry us further onward in the 
 Apocalyptic history of the world. It carries us back- 
 ward for a little. It contains what may be called a retro- 
 spective or a retrogressive view of scenes, transactions, 
 and circumstances that we have already partially reviewed. 
 We had advanced in previous lectures to that glorious 
 and blessed era, the Reformation ; from which we were 
 led to take a retrospective glance of the witnesses. The 
 design of the Spirit of God, in that retrospective history, 
 was, no doubt, to show us that in the darkest eras of the 
 apostacy, there was Christian light on the earth, and 
 that there was not a year in which there was not a loud 
 and fervent protest against the dominant corruptions of 
 Rome. We have, in this chapter, a second retrospective 
 or retrogressive look, but extending still further back 
 than the retrospect of the witnesses, and pointing out, 
 amid Pagan, Papal, and Mahomedan supremacy, the 
 spouse of the Lamb, often concealed, but never utterly 
 crushed. A woman appears here, clothed with the sun, 
 and with the moon under her feet, and a coronal around 
 her head of twelve stars, in pain, waiting to bring forth.
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 217 
 
 A dragon, also, which is the Roman empire, as I shall 
 show you, instigated and actuated by Satan, that old ser- 
 pent, is ready to destroy the man-child the instant it is 
 brought forth. There is, next, the momentary glimpse 
 of splendour and civil grandeur which the Church en- 
 joyed prior to her reception into the wilderness state, 
 where she was to abide for a time, times, and a half. 
 That is, the sum of 1260 years ; or 360 years a " time," 
 twice 360 years, or " times," and the half of 360 years 
 "half a time ;" making in all 1260 prophetic days, or 
 1260 literal years. 
 
 That this event is not successional to, but parallel 
 with, previous ones, we gather from this fact alone, that 
 the history of the sackcloth testimony of the witnesses 
 was to be for 1260 years. The history of the wild 
 beast rising out of the sea, on which we shall enter by 
 and by, was also to be for 1260 years ; and the history 
 of this woman's sojourning in the wilderness was also to 
 be for 1260 years; not the one period of 1260 years 
 succeeding to the other, but both contemporaneous and 
 parallel. They are coincident periods in history. The 
 Spirit traces one from its commencement to its close ; 
 it then goes backward and begins at the second, and 
 traces it to its close. And this is after the manner of 
 human histories, every one of which contains retrospec- 
 tive sketches. For instance, the historian gives an ac- 
 count of the civil, and then comes back and gives the 
 commencement, the progress, and the close of the eccle- 
 siastical history, mentioning at each step of the develop- 
 ment the points of contact, or where they meet and 
 blend into one. 
 
 Having thus seen that this chapter contains a retro- 
 spective history of a great fact, and also teaches in- 
 structive lessons, let us endeavour, while we bear in 
 mind the positions which we have already established, 
 to discover who this woman is what is meant by her 
 recession into the wilderness, and the persecution she 
 experienced from the dragon, who waited to destroy the 
 man-child she was to bring forth. 
 
 I cannot see one jot of evidence for believing, with the
 
 218 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Roman Catholic Church, that this woman was the Virgin 
 Mary, notwithstanding its acceptance by some Protestant 
 divines. I do think that the view that has been vindi- 
 cated by the Rev. Mr. Elliott, and also, I think, more 
 or less, held by that very distinguished and learned 
 expositor of prophecy, Mr. Cuninghame of Lainshaw, 
 is alone true, scriptural, and consistent, viz. that this 
 woman represents the Christian or spiritual Church. 
 There is no evidence that the Virgin Mary retired into 
 the wilderness after Christ was brought forth there is 
 no fact in history that gives the least hint of such an 
 event. To apply it to her would therefore be not only 
 inconsistent with the allusions of the narrative, but be 
 inconsistent with plain historical facts, and we have no 
 right to make facts, in order to explain Apocalyptic 
 mysteries. 
 
 The woman, then, I believe, represents Christ's true 
 Church the same holy company we saw before the 
 sealed ones the God-baptized, in opposition to the man- 
 baptized those that had washed their robes in the blood 
 of Jesus, in contrast with those who had only washed 
 them in the baptismal laver. That I am not fixing an 
 arbitrary interpretation is plain from the circumstance, 
 that the same symbol is employed in other parts of the 
 Bible to denote the Christian Church, and in this very 
 book, chapter xix., it is said, " the marriage of the Lamb 
 is come, and his wife" the woman in the wilderness 
 " his wife hath made herself ready." Rev. xxi. 2, " And 
 I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, . . . pre- 
 pared as a bride" there is the woman again " adorned 
 for her husband," the Lord Jesus Christ. And I need 
 not refer to passages in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
 where the Apostle uses the same figure to denote the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 It is said, she was " clothed with the sun." I do not 
 believe that this means Christ, for not once in the Apo- 
 calypse is he called the sun, though it is said his coun- 
 tenance was as the sun, not borrowing the lustre of the 
 sun. So far from the Apocalypse making the sun the 
 symbol of Christ, it speaks of the new Jerusalem as
 
 THE CHUKCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 219 
 
 having "no need of the sun or of the moon, for the 
 glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
 thereof." The sun and moon, I believe therefore, as I 
 have explained the same firmamental imagery in pre- 
 vious lectures, and as consistency requires them to be 
 explained now, to be the symbol of civil and political 
 powers, and to denote in this instance her possession at 
 the time, right or wrong, of great political grandeur and 
 civil greatness. The twelve stars are used in another por- 
 tion of the Apocalypse to denote the presiding ministers 
 or rulers of the Churches. Clustering all these symbols 
 into one group, I hold the meaning of the woman clothed 
 with the sun, and having the moon under her feet, and 
 the twelve stars around her head, to denote this same 
 woman who afterwards went into the wilderness, as at 
 this time clothed with terrestrial grandeur, in a state, 
 be it good for her or bad for her, of great earthly and 
 sublunary prosperity. 
 
 Then it is said that she was to bring forth a man- 
 child, who was " to rule all nations with a rod of iron." 
 The word, the nations, is, in the original, literally the 
 Gentiles, not denoting all the earth, but portions of it ; 
 and to rule with a rod of iron, is not the exclusive pre- 
 rogative of Christ, for it is expressly stated in Rev. ii. 26, 
 " To him that overcometh . . . will I give power over 
 the nations ; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron." 
 I apprehend that it is the promised privilege of every 
 believer to rule the nations, when the time for that 
 manifestation comes. 
 
 The next scene we find in the drama is the appearance 
 of a dragon. That dragon I conceive to be not Satan, 
 in his independent and personal Satanic character, if I 
 may use the expression, but in this special manifestation 
 through the medium of the antichristian, persecuting, 
 heathen Roman empire ; and the reason why I come to 
 this conclusion is, that the dragon had seven heads, 
 these being used in a subsequent portion of the Apo- 
 calypse, as I shall show you, to denote the seven hills of 
 Rome, the septem colles Romae. 
 
 You will observe, that upon the heads were ten horns.
 
 220 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 or ten kingdoms, as I shall hereafter show you, into 
 which the Roman empire was divided ; and then you 
 will notice, upon the heads were, not the artfyavoi and 
 you recollect I explained on a previous occasion that the 
 laurel crown, or the ort^aroe, was employed by the 
 Roman emperors in the second and beginning of the 
 third century, and that the diadema or imperial diadem 
 was not used by the emperors till after the third cen- 
 tury : then the fact that these seven heads had on them 
 diademata, (t)ia>/juara,) diadems, and not arttyarot, or 
 laurel crowns, is evidence that the period in chronology 
 to which the text refers, must be about the third or 
 fourth century, when the imperial symbol came into 
 favour and imperial prominence. Near the beginning of 
 the third century the dragon, too, was used as a Roman 
 standard. The period was then the transition-period 
 from Paganism to Christianity. 
 
 Let us consider in the next place the birth of the man- 
 child : that child I believe to be the symbol of Christian 
 people, the first-born the 144,000 the sealed ones in- 
 corporated, or in their corporate and united capacity. 
 It cannot mean our Lord in any sense or shape : nothing 
 but the most arbitrary and unwarranted construction 
 could lead to this conclusion. 
 
 Having thus made these explanatory remarks, let me 
 now state that the period, when the woman was thus 
 arrayed and ready to bring forth the man-child, or when 
 the Church was exhibited in her children as in a state of 
 grandeur, prosperity, and power, was about the year 313, 
 when the celebrated decree of Licinius and Constantine 
 was issued, when two-thirds of the Roman empire be- 
 came professedly Christian, and only one third of it con- 
 tinued Pagan, under Maximin, and continued to perse- 
 cute the Christians. We have then the Christian Church 
 united bright from trials she had passed through as- 
 cendant in the political firmament emperors shedding on 
 it the rays of the imperial sun, and her chief ministers a 
 starry coronal around her head. Now, the commencement 
 of the woman's gestation was the year 33, the year of our 
 Lord's resurrection, when the Church, properly speaking,
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 221 
 
 became developed. From that period there elapsed on 
 obvious grounds the number of 9 prophetic months, or 
 40 prophetic weeks, or 280 prophetic days, that is, 280 
 literal years, which is the illustration of the chronolo- 
 gical period here mysteriously shadowed forth. 
 
 Adding, then, to the year 33 the year of our Lord's 
 resurrection, the 9 prophetic months, or the 280 literal 
 years, we come down to the year 313, when the Milan 
 decree was issued. Her travail began a prophetic week 
 or seven literal years previously in the Diocletian perse- 
 cution, and amid the prosperity, toleration, and counte- 
 nance accorded to the Christians, the man-child was 
 brought forth, and speedily raised to imperial power, in- 
 vested with all the patronage of emperors, and while the 
 old Pagan Roman power, or the dragon, concentrated in 
 Maximin, the ruler of a third of the empire, stood by 
 ready to destroy him, but was prevented from accom- 
 plishing his purpose. 
 
 Now that this is the construction of the figure which 
 I have read is evident from such historical statements as 
 the following : " Before the decisive battle," says 
 Milner, " Maximin vowed to Jupiter, that if he obtained 
 the victory, he would abolish the Christian name. The 
 contest between Jehovah and Jupiter was drawing to a 
 close ; Licinius, in a dream, was directed to supplicate, 
 with all his army, the supreme God, in a solemn manner. 
 He gave directions to his soldiers to do so, and they 
 prayed in the field of battle, using the very words which 
 he had received in his dream. In all this the reader 
 will see nothing suspicious, nothing but what is in its 
 own nature very credible, when he considers that the 
 contest between Jehovah and Jupiter was now at its 
 height, and drawing to a crisis. Victory decided in 
 favour of Licinius. Maximin, in consequence of this, 
 published a decree, in which he forbade the molestation 
 of Christians, but did not allow them the liberty of 
 public worship. Warned by former experience of his 
 enmity, the Christians in his dominions dared not to 
 assemble together. Whilst the rest of the Christian 
 world, under the auspices of Constantine and Licinius,
 
 222 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 who published a complete toleration of Christianity, to- 
 gether with that of all other religions, enjoyed peace and 
 tranquillity." " Then," says Gibbon, " the death of 
 Maximin delivered the Church from the last and most 
 implacable of her enemies." 
 
 In other words, in A. D. 313, when the woman brought 
 forth the man-child, the dragon lost his power ; he beheld 
 the out-peering grandeur and elevation of the Christian 
 Church, or, in the words of Gibbon, " Christianity seated 
 on the throne of the Roman world," and Theodosius 
 and the Christians already ruling the Pagans with a rod 
 of iron. 
 
 It is next stated that " there was war in heaven." I 
 showed you, on a previous occasion, that the firmamental 
 heaven denoted the high places of the world, or the 
 places of dominion, empire, rank, and power. There was 
 war between the representatives of Christianity and the 
 representatives of Paganism. And after it had been 
 closed in A. D. 324, we read that Paganism was finally 
 crushed ; Christianity was left without a foe or hostile 
 rival ; and in the language of Constantine, as if fulfilling 
 the Apocalyptic symbol, "the dragon was deposed from 
 the government of affairs by God's Providence." 
 
 Then it is said, when the woman had brought forth 
 the man-child, and that child was raised to dignity in 
 other words, when the Christian Church was fully 
 developed as a great national institution, and raised 
 scripturally or unscripturally I do not here inquire to 
 the seat of political power and civil grandeur, we read 
 that there was a song in heaven, an VITIVIKIOV, a song of 
 victory. It is said, " I heard a loud voice from heaven " 
 that is, from the firmamental heaven, from which, you 
 recollect, Mahomet, as a star, fell ; i. e. the high places 
 of authority and power, "saying, Now is come salvation, 
 and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the 
 power of his Christ ; for the accuser of our brethren is 
 cast down, which accused them before our God day and 
 night. And they overcame him by the blood of the 
 Lamb, and by the word of their testimony ; and they 
 loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice,
 
 THE CHURCH IX THE WILDERNESS. 223 
 
 ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them." It was not 
 angels who sung this song, because Avhen angels refer to 
 Christians, they say, " fellow servants," never " our bre- 
 thren." It was not saints in glory that sung this song, 
 for saints in glory would have said, the accuser of ^(s 
 and of our brethren. It was therefore the song raised 
 to the skies by the rejoicing Christians, at length deli- 
 vered from their outward affliction, and raised to pros- 
 perity and grandeur, a period at which, as I showed 
 you, they most erroneously, but naturally, on so great and 
 unexpected a transition, supposed that the millennial king- 
 dom had arrived. It was an era so bright and brilliant 
 that dawned upon the world, that even the martyrologist 
 Fox has recorded it as his conviction, that the Millen- 
 nium began when Constantine established the Christian 
 Church. At this period, which externally presented so 
 complete a contrast to the day when they were perse- 
 cuted and driven to the dens and caves and solitary 
 places of the earth, the Christians burst forth into songs 
 of praise, thanked God that they were delivered from 
 the imperial tyrants that wore them out ; and placed 
 beneath the patronage of a diadem, under which they 
 thought though, as the sequel proves, erroneously 
 that they should retain their purity, and yet be unmo- 
 lested by the hostile forces that were around them. 
 Hence Eusebius, a contemporary historian, makes the 
 remark, that when the Church was thus raised to un- 
 clouded sunshine, and Paganism crushed, and the 
 Christians, from worshipping in caves, worshipped in 
 cathedrals, and saw the heads of their ministers, from 
 being pelted by pitiless storms, covered with golden 
 mitres, and themselves received as the princes of the 
 earth then the Christians in hymns and songs every 
 where expressed their gratitude to God He gives 
 this instance, " Formerly we used to sing, We have 
 heard what Thou didst in our fathers' days, but now 
 we have to sing a new song of victory, Our own eyes 
 have seen His salvation." And Eusebius speaks of the 
 casting down of Paganism, as the casting down of the 
 dragon, the accuser of the Christian brethren, and he
 
 224 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 narrates that there was a solemn commemoration of the 
 Christian martyrs, who, he makes the remark, were 
 referred to as those who conquered by the cross, that 
 is, by " the blood of the Lamb and by the word of 
 their (/jiaprvpta) witnessing." Such songs were sung by 
 the captives who returned from their dungeons by the 
 prisoners emancipated from the mines, being liberated 
 by imperial goodness, as they came to enjoy that respite 
 of prosperity and civil grandeur, which had been vouch- 
 safed to the whole Christian Church, under the reign of 
 Constantine. 
 
 Such, then, I deem to be the interpretation of this 
 vivid and glorious sketch as far as we have proceeded, 
 and I think that the subsequent portions of this lecture 
 will convince you that my interpretation is scriptural 
 and correct. 
 
 You notice, in the next place, after this song was 
 sung by the Christians raised to power and authority, 
 that it is said, " Woe to the inhabiters of the earth." 
 But you must see that this woe mentioned in verse 12, is 
 no part of the song of victory ; it is a great pity that the 
 break in the chapter is not marked to show that such is 
 the case. "And they overcame him by the blood of the 
 Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. Therefore, 
 rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them." Then a 
 new paragraph, being no part of the song of the triumph- 
 ant Christians, but dictated to John by the Holy Spirit, 
 begins : " Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the 
 sea ; for the devil is come down unto you, having great 
 wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short 
 time." Now, after this prosperity this outward and visi- 
 ble prosperity, which encompassed the outward and the 
 visible Church is there in the page of history the re- 
 cord of any woe that fell speedily on Christendom ? I 
 read, that at the very period when the Church rose to 
 almost more than earthly grandeur, there burst upon the 
 world a woe almost unprecedented in the history of the 
 past ; that woe was the outbreak of the most pestilent 
 heresy that ever tormented the Church what is called 
 the Arian heresy. Arius, a presbyter or minister of
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 225 
 
 Alexandria, first denied the Deity of Christ, and, of ne- 
 cessity, rejected the Atonement. He is the first Socinian 
 whose history is on record ; for Socinianism, just like 
 Popery, however old, is not old enough to bear the test 
 and light of Apostolical Scripture. After he had for 
 some time preached this blasting and blighting heresy, 
 we read that it spread through the length and breadth of 
 the professing Church like wildfire in withered grass, 
 or like the summer lightning from cloud to cloud, until, 
 as it is recorded by contemporaneous writers, two-thirds 
 of the professing Christian Church that Church that 
 had been made so suddenly prosperous, caught the con- 
 tagion, and plunged into the very depths of the Arian 
 heresy. An outwardly prosperous Church rarely con- 
 tinues long a pure one. Caesar's persecution does her 
 often greater good than Caesar's patronage ; and I may 
 add, that a remarkable proof of the utter absurdity of the 
 maxim laid down by the Tractarian divines, that that is 
 Catholic doctrine of which we can say quod semper, quod 
 ubique, quod ab omnibus, is just a reference to this very 
 era. They have said, and you know the sentiment has 
 been quoted in the Tracts for the Times, in the writings 
 of Mr. Newman and Dr. Hook, " that is true which is 
 quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, i. e. that 
 must be the true faith which was held every where, at 
 all times, and by every person in the world. Then, will 
 any of these divines, Dr. Hook, or Dr. Dodsworth, con- 
 sent that this maxim shall be tested by applying it to the 
 fourth century of the Christian era ? If they do, instead 
 of being called Tractarians, they will be compelled to 
 drop the first and best half of the word Tract and 
 retain the last and worst half Arians since the widest 
 and most popular creed among the majority of clergy 
 and laity, in the fourth century, was not evangelical 
 truth, but deadly heresy. It is also remarkable enough, 
 that though the Council of Nice, in 325, decided for 
 Trinitarianism, and denounced Arianism, that that de- 
 cision was as much the result of imperial influence, as 
 it was of internal and intellectual conviction, and it need 
 only be added here, that the very next Council that met
 
 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 in the history of the Church, the Council of Seleucia and 
 Ariminum, by a majority of its component members 
 decided in favour of Arianism. What does this teach 
 us ? That no other standard and rule of faith can be 
 relied on but the Bible. Some say that the Church 
 exists in her episcopacy : bishops have become Popish. 
 Others say that the Church exists in her presbyteries, 
 synods, and councils : assemblies, synods, and presby- 
 teries have become Arian. The great safety of the 
 Church, I believe, is, under God, the enlightenment and 
 Scriptural education of the vast body of the laity. It 
 has been found to be true in almost every age of the 
 Church, that when the state became corrupt bishops, 
 Papists ; and synods, Arians the great body of the 
 people remained true to Christ and Scriptural principles. 
 Severed from the state, episcopacy tends to Popery, and 
 presbytery to Arianism, as Scotch episcopacy and Eng- 
 lish presbyterianism show. The system that seems to 
 perpetuate evangelical truth on the strict voluntary sys- 
 tem with greatest purity and power, is Congregation- 
 alism. I do not speak of form or ceremony, but simply 
 of ecclesiastical polity. 
 
 Thus, the woe that fell upon the Church, namely, the 
 Arian heresy, prevailed so widely, that Athanasius was 
 cast forth from his Church. The Pagans, the heathen 
 Pagans, sided with the Arians, and, as if to show how 
 nearly Arianism approximates to infidelity, the Pagans 
 themselves said, the Arians have ceased to be Christians, 
 and have adopted our creed. Arianism is just the easy 
 let down to scepticism, or infidelity ; it is the half-way 
 house, the resting-place in the downward course. When 
 a man begins to preach intellectually what his heart does 
 not feel, he comes to leave out doctrines that are myste- 
 rious, or humbling to flesh and blood he next lapses 
 into Arianism, tarries there for a season, till finally he 
 sinks into that cold and freezing scepticism, which be- 
 lieves in a cross without glory a Bible without truth 
 and a futurity without hope. 
 
 Such, then, was the woe that fell upon the Church of 
 those times a dark and blasting stain distinct from
 
 TI1E CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 227 
 
 Popery in its dogmas, but conspiring with it against 
 truth, the one a negation of truth the other a deadly 
 corruption of it. After this we read of the woman's 
 flight into the wilderness; to this "woman were given 
 two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the 
 wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a 
 time, times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent." 
 The meaning of which is, that the inner and true Church 
 began gradually to disappear, and the outward alone re- 
 mained. The name took the place of the substance the 
 vessel remained, but the living water had oozed out to run 
 in other channels. The gorgeous garments still stood, 
 but the wearer, the woman, had slipped out in order to 
 reach a more congenial place in the wilderness. She 
 learned the lesson that the Church has since learned in 
 every century of her history, that her hours of persecu- 
 tion have been her purest J she suffered when the sun 
 shone upon her she became purer and more beautiful 
 when all the forces of the world were arrayed against 
 her. The true Church, accordingly, at this era of out- 
 ward prosperity and doctrinal error, began to retreat 
 into the wilderness ; that is, true Christians ceased to be 
 seen they did not appear to the world ; and Milner the 
 historian gives the best fulfilment of this, when he states 
 that, in consequence of Arianism without, and the 
 Church's exaltation to civil and imperial greatness, " the 
 practical use of a crucified Saviour for troubled con- 
 sciences was scarcely to be seen, and the real gospel of 
 Christ began to be hidden from men," the true Church, 
 in short, was about to retire into the wilderness. " God- 
 liness," he adds, " lived obscure in hermitages, and 
 abroad the gospel was almost buried in faction and am- 
 bition." And Mosheim also, a less spiritual but no less 
 true historian, says, " Good men were mixed with the 
 bad ; but, by degrees, the bad so multiplied that men 
 truly holy and devoted to God appeared more rarely, 
 and the pious few were almost crushed by the vicious 
 multitude:" and "fictions," adds Mosheim, "of early 
 origin, about saint veneration and relics, and purifying, 
 or fire, and celibacy, now so prevailed as in course of 
 02
 
 228 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 time almost to thrust true religion aside, or at least to 
 obscure and tarnish it." When the Church, in her ex- 
 terior state, basked, beneath the sunshine of royalty, the 
 true Church with her spiritual but unseen beauty was 
 retreating into the wilderness, there to be hid for a time, 
 times, and half a time. The form of godliness remained 
 its life was hid. The outward Church may enjoy the 
 greatest peace, may be surrounded by the greatest 
 grandeur, and the true Church be altogether hid from 
 the eyes of a hostile world, to whom spiritual religion is 
 foolishness. 
 
 But we find another incident recorded in this chapter, 
 " Two wings of a great eagle were given to the woman 
 to help her to go into the wilderness." The words here 
 translated " of a great eagle," are, literally translated, " of 
 the eagle, that great one," speaking of some particular one, 
 and that particular one is no other than the national 
 symbol of the Roman empire. The empire therefore is 
 here predicted to have spread its eastern and western 
 wings over the Church. We find, then, at this very time, 
 when the true Church was almost buried, and the mere 
 formal Church alone was clothed with circumstantial 
 grandeur and imperial sunshine, that Theodosius, called 
 by Gibbon Theodosius the Great, ascended the throne 
 of the Roman empire, and united the hitherto bipartite 
 empire in one. He was the first Emperor who was a 
 Christian, not in name, like Constantine, but in deed and 
 in truth. Theodosius (and there is the fulfilment of the 
 symbol) gave the visible Church, and therein and thereby 
 the true spiritual body, or Church within a Church, 
 that is, the woman about to retreat into the wilderness, 
 a momentary protection, by spreading over her the wings 
 of the empire. " Every victory of his," says Gibbon, 
 ''contributed to the triumphs of the Orthodox and 
 Catholic faith." He opposed Paganism and Arianism 
 with all his might. 
 
 Thus the recognition of vital Christianity by a pious 
 Emperor aided Christ's people. Theodosius cast the 
 Ariuns out from the churches, restored, we are told, the 
 Trinitarians, and saved the empire for eighteen years from
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 229 
 
 the impending irruption of the Goths during which 
 suspense and interval the woman had time to prepare 
 for her flight into the wilderness. These eighteen years 
 were the respite. This powerful prince was the author 
 of it. On the wings thus given in the respite, the 
 Church took her flight into her quiet rest from the glare 
 of earthly splendour, and the corruption of increasing 
 apostacy. Augustine, under the covert of these wings, 
 entered on his ministry, and the beams of the setting 
 sun irradiated with departing lustre the horizon of the 
 Church of Christ, till the shadows of that dark and 
 dreary night closed around her amid the fastnesses of 
 the Cottian Alps. 
 
 When the Church was receding into the wilderness, 
 the dragon, we read, " cast out of his mouth waters as a 
 flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be 
 carried away of the flood." Crocodiles and whales spout 
 forth great bodies of water. Floods are used in Scrip- 
 ture to denote hostile invasions ; and, in reading the 
 prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, we find the invasion of 
 hostile forces frequently compared to great floods. The 
 flood thus pointed out was that one of which the Papal 
 wild beast (chap, xiii.) arose. Did any thing occur in 
 history to fulfil this symbol ? I open the page of history, 
 and we find occurring at this very time the irruption 
 into Italy of the Visigoths, the Vandals, and the Huns, 
 to whom I have referred under the symbols of the 
 trumpets, all of whom were Arians for it is a remark- 
 able fact, that these Vandals, Visigoths, and Huns had 
 adopted universally the Arian or Socinian Creed at 
 this very time, when the formal Church was supreme 
 and the true Church was retreating into the wilderness, 
 we find, I say, that the Arian Goths and Socinian Van- 
 dals rushed into Rome, endeavouring to exterminate 
 Trinitarians wherever they found them, and to establish 
 the Arian heresy as supreme over the length and 
 breadth of the empire. 
 
 But it is added here, that when the dragon poured these 
 floods after her, "the earth opened her mouth and 
 swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of her 
 mouth." What is the solution of this ? We find that
 
 230 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 when the Arian Goths invaded Rome, they did not do, 
 as I showed you the Mahometans did, retain their own 
 religion and their own king, and insist on the conquered 
 adopting them. On the contrary, they parted with all 
 they were quite absorbed by the orthodox Romans they 
 renounced their Arianism as they settled, and were merg- 
 ed amid the Trinitarian population ; and thus the earth, 
 in the language of the Apocalypse, swallowed up the flood, 
 and helped the woman in her flight into the wilderness. 
 
 Such then is the simple, and, I think, satisfactory ex- 
 position of the chapter I have read: I will not dwell 
 longer upon it, because it falls in contemporaneously with 
 the two witnesses ; in fact, the two witnesses are, to a 
 great extent, a coincident symbol ; they more fully re- 
 present the continuous Christian protest that was uttered 
 against the errors of Rome, while the woman in the 
 wilderness, contemporaneous with it, represents the true 
 Church, separated and hid from the world, visible only 
 to its God. Now, having traced up the history of the 
 witnesses having seen also the recession of the true 
 Church, under the symbol of the woman, into the wil- 
 derness, let us draw some great practical lessons from 
 this subject, for it is a subject of great importance and 
 of much value in the day in which our lot is cast. 
 
 First, then, we learn that the Church of Christ was 
 not to be, as Rome and the Tractarians allege that it has 
 ever been, ever visible to the world. The purest part of 
 the Church was hidden from the outward eye the Church 
 that is heir to the promises the channel of the true 
 succession the perpetuated and uninterrupted body of 
 Christ, was hid for centuries, and the Apostacy alone was 
 dominant visible luminous. 
 
 But it is asked by Tractarian and Romish divines, 
 does not this theory represent as a failure the promise, 
 " On this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of 
 hell shall not prevail against it " ? The Romanist argues, 
 Here is the superstructure of a visible, apostolical, 
 Catholic Church, based on St. Peter ; meant to be and 
 found to be visible in every age ; and that superstructure 
 is the Romish Church. This, however, is a miscon- 
 struction of the text. The visible Church, to use another
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 231 
 
 scriptural symbol, consists of tares and wheat, and the 
 superstructure, to use this figure, of wood, hay, and stub- 
 ble, as well as precious stone. Can such a superstructure 
 be that against which the gates of hell shall not prevail ? 
 This is impossible. Nay, it can be proved that against 
 every portion of the Church, in different times and at 
 different places, destruction has prevailed. The seven 
 Churches of Asia are swept away Corinth is gone 
 the Christians at Rome have been swallowed up amid 
 overwhelming apostacy. 
 
 I believe, therefore, that this superstructure is com- 
 posed exclusively of the living stones, the sealed and 
 sanctified of God, excavated from the quarries of the 
 earth, cut and shaped for their respective places by the 
 Great Builder of the Church, laid upon Christ the found- 
 ation stone, the living Rock, cemented by love, rising, 
 age after age, into a glorious structure, seen by God, 
 dimly seen by the world, and waiting for the day when 
 angels shall shout from heaven, " Grace, grace unto it." 
 If the visible Peter had been the foundation, then, of 
 course, a visible superstructure would have been per- 
 fectly consistent. But no earthly person was so. If 
 Peter had been constituted supreme, is it not strange 
 that our Lord should have said to the apostle after he 
 had constituted Peter the foundation and the head (if he 
 did so) " See thou tell no man?" Why, if Peter had 
 been constituted the head and the foundation, as the 
 Romanist alleges that he was, instead of our Lord saying, 
 Tell no man, would he not have said, Tell every man, 
 that every man may look to and cling to the chair of St. 
 Peter ? And it is quite clear that Peter himself, if he 
 was made the foundation, never knew the fact. For in 
 the subsequent history of the apostles, it is said they 
 contended and disputed which of them should be the 
 greatest in the kingdom of heaven ; and Peter himself 
 says, Not I who am the vicar of Christ, but I who am a 
 co-presbyter -a fellow elder with you. 
 
 In the second place, we gather from this the idea of 
 a true Church. Another promise often misapplied and 
 misconstrued by Romanizing divines, viz. " Go ye into 
 all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,
 
 232 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world/' Now this, it is alleged 
 by the Romanist and Tractarian divines, is the organiza- 
 tion of a visible Church. Here is the pledge of a per- 
 petual Divine presence. The inference they draw is, 
 that there must therefore have been a perpetually visible 
 Church, and a perpetual Divine presence and teaching 
 with that Church ; and therefore they think it quite 
 clear that the Church that was visible throughout the 
 middle ages was the true Church, and what we call the 
 invisible Church a dream, a nonentity, a mistake. But 
 it seems to be overlooked that this promise which Christ 
 makes is a conditional one. When the Tractarians and 
 Romanists quote it, they quote that part of the promise, 
 "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the 
 world," but they quietly skip over the condition of that 
 presence, " teaching the people to observe all things 
 whatsoever I command you." Now wherever there 
 is a ministry not teaching all things that Christ com- 
 mands, there, it is evident from this passage, is not the 
 presence of Christ : wherever there is a minister, a 
 priest, or prelate, or pope, or presbyter synod, or 
 council, or assembly, that teaches as essential what 
 Christ has not revealed, or what is contrary to what 
 Christ commands, there the promise is not applicable, 
 and Christ is not present. I say, Christ is present 
 wherever there is the teaching of Christ's truth. The 
 truth preached is the evidence of Christ's presence. 
 The Romanist says, Christ is present, therefore there 
 must be the teaching of Christ's truth. We say, the 
 truth is preached, and therefore Christ is present. My 
 idea is, that only there is the Apostolic succession, 
 where there is the preaching of Apostolic doctrine. 
 The Tractarian reasoning is, where there is the Apostolic 
 succession, there cannot but be the teaching of Apostolic 
 doctrine. The promise is, I am with you alway : but 
 the condition is> If ye teach all things whatsoever I com- 
 mand you. 
 
 Another promise also on which we can see light cast 
 by this subject is that beautiful one in the Gospel of
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 233 
 
 John, xvi. 13, where our blessed Lord promises to his 
 disciples another Comforter to be with them for ever. 
 " When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide 
 you into all truth." Now these divines to whom I have 
 referred argue, Here is the special promise of the presence 
 of the Spirit of God. That presence, they say, involves 
 this blessed privilege that they, the Church with whom 
 he is present, shall be guided into all truth. And there- 
 fore, they argue, the Romish Church, being the only 
 demonstrable visible succession, never can have fallen 
 into heresy, for our Lord has promised that the Spirit 
 should be perpetually with her, and guide her to all the 
 truth. If the promise were to a visible Church, their 
 reasoning would probably be true ; if the Church was 
 not the woman in the wilderness, their reasoning would 
 be incontrovertible. But the Church consists of two 
 parts ; the inner Church, which alone is the kernel, 
 and the outer Church, which is only the shell. And what 
 is the test of the presence of the Spirit of God ? If that 
 Spirit be with you, then what will that Spirit teach 
 you ? We are told immediately after, " to glorify me." 
 Then I argue, Wheresoever we have a Church and 
 ministry that glorify Christ, there the Spirit of truth 
 is : where Christ is not glorified, there the Spirit is 
 not. But if I can show that the Church of Rome exalts 
 Antichrist, not Christ the sacraments, not the Saviour 
 the Church, not the gospel speaks much of the min- 
 ister, little of the Master speaks much of the saints, 
 little of the Son of God glorifies the Virgin, and not 
 the Virgin's Lord then you have the proof, that, wher- 
 ever the Spirit of truth be, He is not with her she has 
 forfeited the promise, and given evidence that it is so, 
 by glorifying another instead of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The visibility of the Church the true Church of 
 Christ I hold is not to be in this present dispensation. 
 At present the woman is more or less in the wilderness, 
 and in that condition she will continue till the Lord call 
 her forth to manifest her sons to the world. 
 
 Nor is this a mere Apocalyptic statement, unconfirmed 
 by other Scriptures ; for we read that the sons of God
 
 234 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 are not now manifest all creation is " waiting for the 
 manifestation of the sons of God." The jewels are still 
 hidden the witnesses are in sackcloth the woman is 
 in the Avilderness. The Church that adopts Episcopacy, 
 or the Church that adopts Presbytery, or Independency, 
 or Wesleyanism, is the visible Church the outward 
 shell the ecclesiastical formula : portions of the true 
 Church are in each in the wilderness invisible to man 
 visible and known to God. It is true now as it was a 
 millennium ago, " the world knoweth us not," " our life 
 is hid with Christ in God," believers are God's " hidden 
 ones." The form of godliness is predominant the sub- 
 stance of it is not so. But in the new heaven and new 
 earth not in the present dispensation the visible and 
 the true Church shall become identified, and be raised 
 to a state of glorious sunshine, of outward prosperity, 
 and visible greatness, and shine in the firmament as stars 
 for ever. 
 
 But driven from the New Testament, these controver- 
 sialists, to whom I have referred, have argued from the 
 Old Testament ; and there is a passage you will find in 
 every controversial work that takes the Romanistic view 
 of the visible Church Isaiah ii. 2, " And it shall come 
 to pass that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
 established in the top of the mountains, and shall be ex- 
 alted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it." 
 This passage is cited to prove that the Church of Christ 
 is not to be what we said it would be, a woman hidden 
 in the wilderness, but always a great, visible, manifest 
 corporation of professors of the truth. But if you quote 
 this passage to prove that the Church of Christ will be 
 always visible, you will find that you must draw from 
 the rest of the passage a vast deal more ; for if it be the 
 Gentile Church that is "the mountain" here spoken of, 
 that mountain being always raised on the tops of the 
 mountains, it will justify the inference of the Church of 
 Rome, that she ought to have the supremacy, and be, 
 as she claims, the mother and mistress of all Churches. 
 This Protestants do not admit. But I believe that the 
 supremacy of this mountain, whatever it be, is not to take
 
 THE ciiuncii ix THE WILDERNESS. 235 
 
 place in the present dispensation. We read that in the 
 present dispensation, according to the words of our 
 Lord, " nation shall rise up against nation, kingdom 
 against kingdom;" but the characteristic of the period 
 to which this promise refers, as it is stated in what 
 follows it, is, that they "shall beat their swords into 
 ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, nei- 
 ther shall they learn war any more." Our Lord says 
 expressly, that during this dispensation nation shall war 
 against nation this is to be its predominant charac- 
 teristic ; but at that time, when this mountain shall be 
 exalted above the mountains, "nation shall not war 
 against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 
 I draw, therefore, the inference, that it is not in this 
 dispensation that this mountain of the Lord's house is 
 thus to be elevated on the tops of the mountains. If we 
 turn to the parallel prophecy in Micah, (iii. iv.,) where 
 the very same words occur, " Therefore shall Zion for 
 your sakes be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become 
 heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places 
 of the forest." You can plainly see here that the 
 mountain is not a Gentile Church, but the Jewish. Je- 
 rusalem is first to be overturned this has been done. 
 " But in the last days it shall come to pass that the moun- 
 tain of the house of the Lord (the same mountain) shall 
 be established in the top of the mountains" that is, the 
 mountain spoken of in the closing verse of the third 
 chapter, namely, Jerusalem. 
 
 We Gentiles treat the poor Jews in a strange manner : 
 all the brilliant promises we Gentiles take, and say these 
 are ours ; but the moment we read threatening and pre- 
 dicted judgments, we say these are for the Jews : we eat 
 the kernel and thank God, and we hand the shell to the 
 Jews, and tell them, this is for you. But this is neither 
 consistent nor Christian treatment. I believe the brilliant 
 promises of Isaiah are primarily the property of the 
 Jews. The Jewish Church is chastened, not utterly cast 
 off. I believe, and I think I shall prove it to you in a 
 subsequent lecture, that those deep-toned Oriental voices 
 that you hear in the streets of London, shall yet be
 
 236 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 heard in the streets of Jerusalem : once they shouted 
 " Crucify him ! crucify him ! " next they shall cry in 
 one national burst of exultation, " Thou art the King of 
 Glory, O Christ : This is our God, and we have waited 
 for him : Jesus is the light that lightens the Gentiles, 
 and the glory of his ancient people Israel." I believe 
 that on the very spot on which they crucified Him, they 
 shall praise and worship Him. Without speaking poli- 
 tically, or saying whether I approve of it or disapprove 
 of it, I may state the startling phenomenon, as a sign of 
 the times, that a Jew has been chosen to represent a 
 portion of the metropolis of the greatest empire in the 
 world, in the midst of the senate of England. Whatever 
 the fact may be, or whatever construction you may put 
 upon the fact, it is one of those precursory phenomena 
 that are drawing the attention of the world to that peo- 
 ple. I believe that the day will come when the Jews 
 will start into life in every nation of the earth, like 
 lights breaking forth in the bosom of darkness like 
 salt amid the corrupted earth ; and the unbelievers of 
 the world witnessing the new scene, and arrested by a 
 new evidence, shall some believe and live, and others 
 wonder and perish. 
 
 Thus, then, we have proved from this passage, I think, 
 that the promise of the exaltation of the Lord's house 
 above the mountains, does not prove that the gospel 
 Church is in this dispensation to be found always in- 
 vested with great outward splendour. 
 
 Then, the only other passage to which I will refer, is 
 that one in John xvii., which I recollect was very often 
 quoted in the course of that interesting experiment, the 
 Evangelical Alliance, and as often misapplied. Our Lord 
 says, " I pray for them : I pray not for the world, but 
 for them which thou hast given me ; for they are thine : 
 that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I 
 in Thee : that the world may believe that Thou hast sent 
 me." According to the interpretation of some of those 
 men, at whose feet I am unworthy to sit, it means that 
 all Christians may all be so visibly united as Christians, 
 that the world, seeing a united Church, may believe, and
 
 THE CHUKCI1 IN THE WILDERNESS. 237 
 
 be converted and live. I conceive this is not the mean- 
 ing of the passage. In the first place, if this be its 
 meaning, what explanation can we give of what our 
 Lord previously said, "I pray not for the world?" if 
 so.be that in this passage he prays for the conversion 
 of the world ? In the second place, it is truly impossible 
 that this prayer should be fulfilled in this dispensa- 
 tion : when our Lord says, " I pray that all who shall 
 believe on Me through their word may be one," He 
 does not mean all in every spot of the earth during any 
 one year, but that all, the first that believed in Jeru- 
 salem, those in the first century that believed in Rome, 
 and those in the last that believed in London that they 
 all, that is, all the Christians that have believed in the 
 course of the last eighteen centuries I pray that they 
 may be visibly one. This cannot take place in this dis- 
 pensation. It must succeed, not precede, the Resurrection. 
 But will it ever take place ? you ask. Yes : for the whole 
 creation groans and travails in pain together, "waiting 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God." That mani- 
 festation of the sons of God will yet visibly take place. 
 Then, and then only, will they all be one visibly. I be- 
 lieve the day comes when the whole of the redeemed 
 shall congregate together, when and where the Lord 
 may appoint, and all true believers, thus gathered 
 out of every nation and clime, and kindred and tongue, 
 shall be seen amid the light of glory to be not only 
 essentially, and inseparably, and eternally, but visibly 
 One. These words, " That the world may believe that 
 Thou hast sent me," do not imply the conversion of the 
 world : when it is intended to convey a saving accept- 
 ance of Christ it is, that they may believe on me. But 
 here it is not " that they may believe on me," but that 
 " they may believe that Thou hast sent me." This ex- 
 pression, believe on me, signifies conviction, and ending 
 in conversion : " believe that Thou hast sent me," is con- 
 viction not followed by conversion at all. It means, in 
 this case, conviction of the truth when the opportunity 
 of salvation has passed away. 
 
 Thus, the woman is still in the wilderness the true
 
 238 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Church is still hidden the sealed ones are seen by God, 
 but not seen as such by the world ; and if it be so then, 
 let gs recollect, there may be Christians where the eye 
 cannot see them, heirs of God concealed where we see 
 none. There are stars in the sky whose light has not 
 reached us ; gems in the caves of the sea that eye hath 
 not seeri ; flowers that bloom in the desert ; Christians 
 in Nero's palace ; believers in the depths of the Apostacy. 
 Circumstances and situations in life may conceal the 
 Christian from the eye ; the poor man who has not six- 
 pence to put into the box may have a heart more benevo- 
 lent than the person that sent me without name the other 
 day a fifty pound Bank note for the rebuilding of the 
 Scotch Church. The world judges of benevolence by 
 what it sees in the hand ; God judges of benevolence 
 by what he sees in the heart. There may be a church in 
 some hovel into which the rich man would not enter, and 
 which the world's great ones would think themselves de- 
 filed if they attempted to approach. It is not the loudest 
 talkers that are the greatest Christians. Real Chris- 
 tianity is concealed by diffidence : many Christians feet 
 the deepest who say the least they would be better than 
 they seem, not seem better than they are. There are 
 deep streams that rush onward to the ocean, and the very 
 depth of their waters gives them silence. 
 
 There may be true Christians hidden by their own 
 constitutional character. Take Peter and Paul and John ; 
 God the Creator made them different ; and though God 
 the Redeemer gave them grace, He did not mould them 
 all into one character, but He sanctified Paul, and sanc- 
 tified Peter, and sanctified John. That rugged casket 
 contains a precious gem that silent man may have a 
 heart that overflows with love and is ever open to melt- 
 ing charity that hot-tempered man may have the most 
 forgiving spirit in the world ; many a disguise covers 
 the true Christian ; Christ's Church is in the wilderness. 
 Her raiment is seen only by the spiritual eye she is all 
 glorious within. 
 
 And this grace also manifests itself in a different 
 manner in different individuals. Grace speaks in one ;
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. 239 
 
 it is silent in a second ; it gives in a third ; it visits the 
 poor in a fourth ; it prays in a fifth ; it dies in a sixth. 
 But because the grace that A has does not show itself in 
 the way in which the grace that B has does, we are not 
 to deny that A is a Christian. 
 
 Do you belong to the children of the woman in the 
 wilderness ? Are your names registered among those 
 who are the witnesses of Christ ? The great question 
 for us is, do we belong not to the outward Church, but 
 do we belong to that inner Church ; are we regenerated 
 by the Spirit and risen with Christ ? Let me ask the 
 question, then, who is a Christian ? Let me ask, who is 
 on the Lord's side ? 
 
 Not the infidel, for he declares religion to be fanati- 
 cism, the Bible to be a lie, and the hope of heaven to 
 be a delusion. 
 
 Not the Roman Catholic. There may be Christians 
 in Rome, but not of Rome : as I said last night, there 
 may be many a tonsured monk in Abraham's bosom. 
 Not the Roman Catholic, whether on the Tiber or the 
 Isis whether at Rome or at Oxford with them the 
 Church is all, Christ is a doctrine of reserve. Not a 
 Churchman, as such. You do not belong to Christ's 
 Church because you are a Churchman. It is quite pos- 
 sible to be established by Acts of Parliament, and yet to 
 be disowned by the Acts of the Apostles. It is quite 
 possible to bask beneath the sunshine of the State, and 
 yet to be a stranger to the love of Christ and to the light 
 of the gospel. 
 
 Not the Dissenters, as such. It is quite possible to 
 dissent from the Establishment, and yet not belong to 
 Christ. It is quite possible to be an advocate of the 
 voluntary system, and yet have in the heart enmity to 
 Christ and him crucified. It is quite possible to be free 
 from all the chains of Caesar, and all the manacles of the 
 State, and yet to be the slave of Satan, and the servant 
 of corruption and of sin. 
 
 Nor, because you are baptized, do you belong to the 
 true Church. " He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, 
 neither is that circumcision which is outward in the
 
 240 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 flesli ; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circum- 
 cision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the 
 letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God." Because 
 you take the Lord's supper, you do not therefore belong 
 to the true Church. Who then do belong to it? We 
 cannot say, with certainty, A belongs to it, and B does 
 not, or B and C do not : but we can pronounce the 
 characters that compose it. They were chosen of 
 Christ before the foundation of the world that they 
 might be holy. They are " purchased with the pre- 
 cious blood of a Lamb without blemish and without 
 spot." They receive the word of Christ, not as a theory 
 for discussion or a topic for dispute, but as a truth for 
 acceptance in the head, and for influencing the heart, 
 and actuating the life. They build upon the Rock of 
 Ages the superstructure of their hope, and seek heaven 
 in Christ, the only way to it. They have their heart 
 and their treasure in heaven, where Christ their Saviour 
 is. They are holy, for without holiness no man can see 
 the Lord. They are happy, for how can a Christian 
 feel otherwise than happy ? and, may I not add, how 
 can a worldly man enjoy one moment of real happiness ? 
 What is a Christian ? A man that feels his immortality 
 till his work is done : for him the arrow that flieth by 
 day has no point, and the pestilence that wasteth at 
 noon-day no contagion, till he has finished the work his 
 Father has given him to do : a man that builds upon the 
 rock that remains when all around is swept away who, 
 when he loses all, wealth, estate, and family, and friends, 
 can lift up his eyes to the everlasting hills, and say, I 
 have lost nothing, for the great God is my Father In- 
 finitude the breadth of my home Eternity itself the 
 duration of my lifetime. Outward circumstances may 
 conceal or render suspected such a one, but his name is 
 in the Lamb's Book of Life, and his inheritance is a 
 crown of glory.
 
 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LAMB. 
 
 " And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and 
 with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Fa- 
 ther's name written in their foreheads. 
 
 ' ' And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, 
 and as the voice of a great thunder : and I heard the voice of 
 harpers harping with their harps : 
 
 " And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and be- 
 fore the four beasts, and the elders : and no man could learn that 
 song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were 
 redeemed from the earth. 
 
 " These are they which were not defiled with women ; for they are 
 virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever 
 he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the 
 rirstfruits unto God and to the Lamb. 
 
 " And in their mouth was found no guile : for they are without 
 fault before the throne of God." REV. xiv. 1 5. 
 
 IN the course of my expositions of the Apocalypse I 
 have seen so many bright and beautiful spots, that I 
 regret being so often obliged to pass them over, in con- 
 sequence of the effort I have made to give you a 
 connected exposition of the whole. 
 
 We have here the description of that little throng 
 of which we have often spoken, named, in other 
 portions of the Apocalypse, the two witnesses ; in 
 another part, the woman clothed with the sun ; in 
 another, as having come out of great tribulation, 
 and having washed their robes and made them white 
 in the blood of the Lamb. In another part they are 
 represented as singing, " Thou wast slain for us, and 
 hast redeemed us out of every kindred and people, 
 and nation and tongue, and hast made us kings and 
 priests unto our God, and we shall reign with thee." 
 I showed you that never was there an age in the history
 
 242 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of the past so utterly dark that there were not here 
 and there some bright and radiant stars, indicating that 
 the Sun of righteousness, though hidden, was not ex- 
 tinguished, or withdrawn from his Church. I have 
 shown you that when the Apostacy was most complete, 
 and its overshadowing superstitions the most oppressive, 
 there were here and there faithful witnesses, who tes- 
 tified for God, for Christ, and for the great truths of 
 Christianity, even in the very worst of circumstances. 
 Now the hundred and forty-four thousand is only an 
 Apocalyptic phrase for the election of God : it is only a 
 variety of expression for the two witnesses, or for the 
 woman in the wilderness, or for those that came out of 
 great tribulation, and sung the song of Moses and of 
 the Lamb : and here, where this picture is presented of 
 the Lamb seated on the throne, and the hundred and 
 forty-four thousand gathered round him, we have only ex- 
 pressed, in different language, the very same idea which 
 is beautifully set forth by St. Paul in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, when he says, (xii. 22 24,) "But ye are 
 come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living 
 God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable 
 company of angels, to the general assembly of the 
 church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, 
 and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just 
 men made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the 
 new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that 
 speaketh better things than that of Abel." The same 
 hundred and forty-four thousand are spoken of in other 
 parts of Scripture, as those who say " our citizenship is 
 in heaven ; " as those who are said " to sit together with 
 Christ in heavenly places ; " as those who " are sealed 
 with the Holy Spirit of promise :" those who are "jus- 
 tified by faith and have peace with God : " as those to 
 whom "there is no condemnation;" who "walk not 
 after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Alas, amid all the 
 clash and collision of opinions upon Churches and Church 
 forms and Church government, there seems to be lost the 
 recollection and expression of this blessed truth, that the 
 Chui-ch of Christ is a totally different thing from the
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LAMB. 243 
 
 Church of England, or the Church of Ireland, or the 
 Church of Scotland, or dissenting, or established or non- 
 established Church of any description whatever. I be- 
 lieve that there is no stronger symptom of approaching 
 wreck than when men begin to quarrel about the vessel, 
 and lose their perception of the glory for which that 
 vessel was made. There is no stronger proof of the 
 very first commencement of idolatry than cleaving to the 
 altar, contending for its forms, and forgetting that the 
 altar was raised that there might burn and glow upon it 
 the mingling beams of mercy and truth that have met 
 together, and righteousness and peace that have kissed 
 each other. The Church of Christ is a community 
 spread over every section of the earth ; and much as I 
 have said and proved of the corruptions of the Church 
 of Rome, I believe there is a fragment of the Church 
 of Christ in the very bosoni of that awful apostacy. 
 I believe that there are many in glory who were in the 
 Church of Rome, but who are not, therefore, witnesses 
 to its purity, but witnesses to the penetrating power of 
 God's truth, which pierces the strongest eclipse, and 
 makes converts under the most unfavourable circum- 
 stances. I believe that there are portions of the hun- 
 dred and forty-four thousand in the Church of England, 
 portions in the Church of Scotland, portions among our 
 Independent, Baptist, and Wesleyan communions also ; 
 they are the truest churchmen and they are the high 
 churchmen ; they are the only churchmen who believe 
 in the reality of this truth. What is it but Popery to 
 magnify the sect, as if that alone were pure, and to ex- 
 communicate the sister Church because it is not alto- 
 gether what Ave should wish it to be. Let us, my dear 
 friends, rejoice that the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apos- 
 tolic Church is not what Dr. Pusey makes it, nor yet 
 what Dr. Wiseman makes it, nor yet what Dr. Candlish 
 makes it, nor yet what Dr. M'Neile, or Dr. Muir, or 
 any other may ever attempt to make it but what 
 Christ has made it, according to his election of grace 
 the hundred forty and four thousand, who sing the Song 
 of Moses and of the Lamb. In other words, we are 
 
 R2
 
 244 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 taught in this passage that the Head of tnese ransomed 
 ones, the great centre around which they cling, is not 
 any thing earthly, or local, or visible, but Christ alone. 
 Of this Church, the hundred forty and four thousand, 
 Christ alone is the living, the everlasting, the glorious 
 nead. Christ is not the head of any visible Church on 
 earth in the sense in which he is the head of this elect 
 and redeemed body, called the hundred forty and four 
 thousand. These are constituent stones of the arch, he 
 is the glorious key-stone ; they are the body, he is the 
 head, and, as in this vision, they cluster around his throne, 
 and behold the Lamb, and rejoice amid the splendours 
 of his crown, and celebrate his praise and his alone. 
 The model of the true Church is not what some have 
 thought it, the mediaeval Church, that would be a most 
 corrupt model ; nor yet the Reformed Church of the 
 sixteenth century, that was a defective one : but the great 
 model of the Christian Church is beyond the skies, and 
 the nearer the Church of Christ on earth approximates in 
 its character to the Church in glory, the more perfect 
 that Church becomes. There is also another lesson that 
 we ought not to forget, which is this : that there are but 
 two great parties in the world, each with its head or its 
 centre. There is the Apostacy, its head and its centre 
 Antichrist ; and the Apostolical Church, the hundred 
 forty and four thousand, with its head and its centre 
 Christ. And that head and centre is the spring and 
 source of all our Christianity. And, as you will see in 
 the Church of Rome, every difference in doctrine, every 
 diversity of sentiment, forgiven and forgotten on con- 
 dition that all cling to the chair of St. Peter, and hold the 
 Pope to be the head of the Church ; even so it ought to be, 
 if it is not so, in the Protestant Church, meaning by that 
 the Scriptural Church universal, every difference in dis- 
 cipline, every diversity in sentiment or detail, is forgiven 
 and forgotten on condition that you cling to Christ, and 
 to Christ alone, as the head of the true Church. This is 
 the difference between the Apostate Church and the 
 Apostolical Church : the one has its head and its centre 
 Antichrist, the other has its head and centre Christ :
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LAMB. 245 
 
 the one has a visible head, and therefore a visible unity 
 or uniformity ; the other has an invisible head, and there- 
 fore it has an invisible unity, but a real and a substantial 
 unity notwithstanding. Hence I have always felt, that, 
 in the Protestant Church, it would be inconsistent with 
 what is stated in the Bible to make all the sections of 
 that Church uniform in rites, ceremonies, and discipline. 
 I believe that it would be not only contrary to what is in 
 the Bible, but that it would be inexpedient as a matter of 
 fact. I believe it was not God's design, it was not God's 
 great design, that there should be absolute uniformity in 
 grace any more than that there should be in nature. If 
 we look at the firmament of heaven, God might have 
 made every star of the sixth magnitude, or of the first 
 magnitude, but He has not done so, one star differs from 
 another star in glory. If we look upon earth, each 
 flower differs from another flower in fragrance, and in 
 tints. God might have made each flower a rose, but He 
 did not do so. He made many flowers, of many sizes, of 
 many tints, all having one grand principle in common, 
 their vegetable life, but developing that principle in every 
 variety of tint, and blossom, and beauty. So, when I look 
 at this immense assembly, I can see here several thousand 
 faces ; every face in this assembly has certain character- 
 istics in common, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, so com- 
 plete, that there is none without these characteristics ; 
 but there are not two faces in this Hall that are so like 
 each other that you could mistake them for a moment. 
 What does this show ? That there is a certain principle 
 called Unity, common to all, but that this unity developes 
 itself in infinite varieties. This I believe to represent the 
 state of God's visible Church : all its parts hold certain 
 great principles in common. We hold one God one 
 Christ one Spirit. We hold one baptism one Lord's 
 supper. We hold the sacredness of the Sabbath the 
 completeness of the Bible these are the grand essential, 
 elemental characteristics of our common unity, but these 
 grand essential points or principles which we hold in 
 common have developed themselves in a great variety of 
 forms : but that very variety itself only proves the essential
 
 246 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 unity that is within. Nature resists uniformity, and so does 
 grace. If you go into the wood in the season of autumn 
 and cut each out-spreading oak into the form of a perfect 
 cone, you will thus have made every oak the facsimile of 
 its fellow, and produced a most complete and perfect 
 sylvan uniformity. But is this the will of Him that 
 made the trees ? Wait a little : wait till next spring. The 
 moment that the sap of life rises from the roots into the 
 trunks, and breaks out into foliage, that moment the uni- 
 formity is gone, for each branch will develope itself ac- 
 cording to its own " sweet will," and the dead trees only 
 will remain as man shaped them, to let the uniformist 
 know that God meant unity to be in nature, but not 
 uniformity in development. So it is in the Church of 
 Christ. Wherever a Pope with his tiara, or an Arch- 
 bishop Laud with his crosier, or a King with his sceptre, 
 or a Cromwell with his iron sword, have tried to make 
 Christians perfectly uniform in all things, they have found 
 a power mightier than Kings, and Popes, and Prelates, 
 and Consuls in that great law that God has struck into 
 his kingdom of grace, telling us that unity in essentials 
 with diversity in development is God's great design. 
 
 Now these hundred forty and four thousand have one 
 centre, one head. They are complete in Christ they 
 glory in his grace they look to Jesus in heaven j ust as 
 they looked to him on earth. On earth they ran the 
 race set before them, looking unto Jesus ; in heaven they 
 surround his throne and sing the praises of the Lamb, 
 that sits upon that throne with his hundred forty and 
 four thousand. Now it is stated that this elect, this 
 justified, this redeemed company, sung a new song 
 which no man could sing, except the hundred forty and 
 four thousand, " who were redeemed from the earth." 
 
 I have spoken of election. Now I have heard that 
 there are strangers who attend this Hall, who complain 
 that I even mention the word. They say it is not a true 
 doctrine ; but I think, if they read a little longer their 
 Bibles, they will see that it is true. The question is 
 not, can you comprehend it ? or can I reconcile it ? 
 But the real question is Is it in the Bible? I wish
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LAMB. 247 
 
 I could only teach you this point, which is at the present 
 day of great importance. I believe a thing, not because 
 A says it, or B holds it, or A can comprehend it, or B 
 can explain it, but because God says it. Our rule of 
 faith is not what the best men say, or what most 
 men say, but what God says in his blessed word. Be- 
 cause I cannot comprehend a doctrine, I do not give that 
 as a reason for rejecting it. First, I ask, is it here ? If 
 it is, I say, it is God's truth ; if it is not here, I say it 
 is not true. We read in one page, " No man can come 
 to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw 
 him." I read on the next page, " Come unto me." 
 "Ye will not come unto me." "Why will ye die?" 
 You say, these are contradictory. I say, they look so 
 to us ; they are not contradictory absolutely, but con- 
 tradictory relatively that is, we cannot see how to re- 
 concile them ; but that does not prove they are irrecon- 
 cileable. You know it is a great law in mathematics, 
 that if two lines were to start out from the position that 
 I now occupy, these two straight lines might seem to you 
 for a thousand miles to be perfectly parallel and never to 
 meet ; but if in either of these lines there were the very 
 slightest inclination to each other, they will ultimately 
 meet and blend together. Thus it is with these truths 
 of election and man's responsibility. They may seem to 
 us for ten thousand miles to be perfectly parallel, never 
 to be in contact together, but when we meet with the 
 hundred forty and four thousand, we shall see that there 
 was an inclination given them in heaven by the touch of 
 God, and in the brightness of that throne they will meet 
 and mingle and be eternally one. I open my Bible, and 
 there I find, " No man can come to me, except the 
 Father which hath sent me draw him." There is God's 
 sovereignty ! On another page I read, " Ye will not 
 come to me," there is man's responsibility. I do not 
 say, because God is sovereign, man is not responsible, or 
 because man is responsible, God is not sovereign ; but, 
 I say, both are true, for both are plainly stated in God's 
 word ; and he that rejects one, leaves not an inch of 
 ground on which to stand for the reception of the other.
 
 248 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Such passages as these, " Elect from the foundation of 
 the world," " Chosen in Christ before the world be- 
 gan," you say will tend to make men sin, because since 
 they are elect, they must be eternally saved. That is 
 your logic, not God's word that is human reason, not 
 God's revelation. You have no more authority for such 
 reasoning than you have for the rejection of both the 
 doctrines I have now stated. I not only refer to other 
 texts, but I appeal to fact. Do you find that the most 
 devoted Christians concur with you ? Not at all. The 
 man that believes he is saved most completely by grace, 
 is just the man who abounds the most consistently in 
 whatever things are pure and just and lovely and of good 
 report. One fact will be felt by many of you to be better 
 than a thousand arguments. With a Scotch audience, 
 metaphysical reasoning will always have the most 
 power ; with an English audience, a fact will always be 
 the most conclusive. Then here is a fact, I say, that the 
 men who believe in that doctrine are the men : I appeal 
 to their lives, I appeal to their writings. I appeal to the 
 Newtons, the Howels, and others, of whom the world 
 was not worthy who were the purest and the holiest 
 in their lives and conversations. 
 
 But it is now stated, " and no man could learn that 
 song but the hundred forty and four thousand." The 
 song is described in another part of Revelation, " Unto 
 him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his 
 own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto 
 God and his Father ; unto him be glory and dominion 
 for ever and ever. Amen." Why is it that they could 
 not learn this song ? First, its key-note was Christ, and 
 they that belong to Antichrist have nothing in their 
 constitutions made to receive it. You know that an 
 unmusical ear is never pleased with melody, or harmony 
 either. An unsanctified heart is never refreshed by 
 holiness, and purity, and peace. You cannot make the 
 physical ear susceptible of sweet sounds, and man cannot 
 make the natural heart susceptible of divine grace. It 
 needs the touch of the Creator in the one, it needs the 
 tuning of the Creator in the other. Hence, if an un-
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LA3IB. 249 
 
 forgiven and an unsanctified sinner were admitted into 
 heaven, he could not take his part in that choir he 
 could neither be admitted as a performer, nor as a hearer. 
 He could take no place in it ; he would find himself 
 in a strange and uncongenial element, and the sharpen- 
 ing of a saw would not be greater discord to our ear 
 than the new song of the hundred forty and four thou- 
 sand to his. And the reason of this is explained by 
 such passages as, "the preaching of the cross is to the 
 natural man foolishness" "foolishness to the Greek, 
 and a stumbling-block to the Jew, because it is spiritual- 
 ly discerned." 
 
 The epithet "new" is applied to this song. What is 
 meant by that ? I think it is one of the most expressive 
 appellatives in the word of God. Why is the song of 
 the gospel said to be "new?" Does this mean new in 
 the sense of just being discovered ? No ; it means this : 
 All created things on earth may soon pall : the fairest 
 landscape that you have often looked at, fails at length 
 to please the most exquisite melody which is too 
 frequently sung, soon becomes hackneyed infinite ex- 
 cellence alone will bear to be seen every day, and never 
 to fade. This song is infinite music it is an infinite 
 harmony an infinite Christ is its key-note it has infi- 
 nite glory its diapason for ever, and it is as new after a 
 million years as it was when it was first sung. 
 
 But the great characteristics of the redeemed ones 
 are two that I must especially notice. 
 
 I. The first of these is, that " they followed the 
 Lamb." 
 
 II. The second is, that therefore " they are without 
 fault before the throne of God." 
 
 I. First, then, " They follow the Lamb whithersoever 
 he goeth" this was their practice on earth ; "they are 
 without spot before the throne of God" this is their 
 reward in heaven. The two are so connected, that 
 without the one we can never attain the other. 
 
 Let me now show you how Christians still follow the 
 Lamb. They follow him, 1st, in the end and object of 
 his life ; they follow him, 2ndly, in the great standard
 
 250 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 to which he appealed ; they follow him, 3rdly, in his in- 
 tercourse with the world ; 4thly, in his joys ; lastly, in 
 his sorrows. They follow Christ in all these points of 
 view. 
 
 First, then, they follow Christ in the end and object 
 of his life. I put the question to you, my dear friends, 
 what is the end and object of your existence ? What is 
 it that you specially contemplate as the great end that 
 you are seeking to attain ? There are as various ends 
 among you as there are persons in the world. The 
 only object of some is to satisfy the desires of the 
 flesh ; they live sinners, they die sufferers. They are 
 slaves in life, they are wretched in death. There are 
 others, again, whose main object is to do no harm. 
 There are persons in the world who propose nothing 
 definite to themselves, but to pass through the world 
 without doing harm to any body. They are content to 
 be blanks, if they can only escape the ignominy of being 
 blots. They are satisfied to hide their talent in a nap- 
 kin, but they must be ignorant of the judgment of Him 
 who gave it, " Cast him into outer darkness, there shall 
 be weeping and gnashing of teeth." There are others 
 whose great object is to possess the world, to get rich, 
 to become comfortable, to provide for their families, to 
 retire and spend the remainder of their days in uncor- 
 rupted happiness. They are always disappointed ; they 
 are the most miserable men whose consuming care has 
 been to retire and enjoy themselves. These persons, 
 by a great law, never know what enjoyment is. The 
 very transition is miserable, from the fact that their 
 minds are not prepared and filled with the glorious 
 truths of the gospel to be their consolation and the sub- 
 ject of their thoughts in age, and this will sufficiently 
 account for my assertion, that such men can never be 
 happy. There are others, again, whose main object in life 
 is to do good to others. These are of a nobler grade : 
 there is something beautiful in the benevolent man. It 
 is no light evidence, one might believe, of grace, when a 
 man can say, " When the ear heard me, then it blessed 
 me, and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me :
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LAMB. 251 
 
 because I delivered the poor that cried, and the father- 
 less, and him that had no one to help him. The blessing 
 of him that was ready to perish came upon me : and I 
 caused the widow's heart to sing for joy." And beauti- 
 ful as this character is, it is not all. We may be bene- 
 volent, and yet not Christians ; we may minister to the 
 wants of the bodies of thousands, and yet never have 
 cherished one anxious thought about the state of our 
 own soul. But what was Christ's great object in life ? 
 He himself has told us ; he says, " My meat and my 
 drink is to do the will of him that sent me." Here was 
 the great end proposed by our Lord. And, in another 
 passage, " I come not to do mine own will, but the will 
 of him that sent me." 
 
 And now, my dear friends, let me speak to you. Do 
 not ask, when some design is placed before you, Is this 
 profitable ? will this be popular ? but ask the question 
 first of all, Is it consistent with the will of Christ ? Our 
 Lord, the great example to us, all the time of his sojourn 
 on earth, sought to do the will of God : and if we are 
 washed in his blood, we shall endeavour to imitate his 
 example ; and our first and chiefest inquiry on many 
 subjects in all situations, in college, in school, and in 
 business, will be, what is the will of God ? and, is this 
 consistent with that will ? 
 
 They follow Christ, not only in the object of his life, 
 but also in the great standard to which Christ appealed. 
 This was a remarkable characteristic of our blessed 
 Lord. Christ was God, in Him were the treasures of 
 infinite wisdom. When any one asked him a question, 
 he might have said, I say unto thee thus it is ; but He 
 did not say so. And this is a wondrous fact, and I hope 
 you will not forget it when our Lord was asked, Is 
 this so ? is it lawful to do this ? is it right to do that ? 
 He did not reply, It is so ; for I, who am infinite wis- 
 dom, tell thee so ; but he always replied, " How readest 
 thou ?" " It is written" " Search the Scriptures, for 
 these are they that testify of me." Can you conceive 
 a higher honour put upon God's word, than that He 
 that inspired it should appeal to it for a response to
 
 252 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 every question ? that He who is infinite wisdom should 
 draw from it the exposition of every difficulty ? When 
 the Jews asked him any thing, his continual answer 
 was, " How readest thou?" " Search the Scriptures;" 
 and when he answered them, " then opened he their 
 understandings, that they might understand the Scrip- 
 tures." 
 
 My dear friends, let it be so with you : and this brings 
 me to a subject on which I have already said something : 
 if you are asked, Is the doctrine of election true ? the 
 right answer is not, I cannot believe it I cannot see 
 how it can be so ; but the right answer is, How readest 
 thou ? and if you find it written here, the question is 
 answered the controversy settled, for God has spoken. 
 And again, do you wish an answer to the question, What 
 is man's state by nature ? some will tell you, Can we be- 
 lieve that that beautiful babe that slumbers on its mother's 
 knee, with the countenance of a cherub, can have the 
 heart and nature of a sinner ? Dear friend, how readest 
 thou ? Search the Scripture " The heart is deceitful 
 above all things, and desperately wicked" "Every 
 imagination of the thoughts of our heart is only evil 
 continually." And in that beautiful babe's heart lie 
 coiled up all the passions that swept Europe in the his- 
 tory of Napoleon, or deluged the earth with blood in 
 the persecutions of the Papacy. Nothing can save that 
 child though I believe and can prove that every babe 
 that dies in infancy is saved, and saved for ever yet it 
 is true that nothing can make that sweet unconscious 
 babe a child of grace but the God that made him the 
 Holy Spirit the Quickener. If you ask the question, 
 How can I be justified before God ? some will say, Give 
 alms to the poor do good to others ; but the right way 
 is How readest thou ? What does God say ? We are 
 justified by Christ we are justified by faith "He who 
 knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made 
 the righteousness of God in Him." And whatever be 
 your difficulties with reference to religion, always open 
 the Scriptures read and see what is written there. 
 You must bring every thing to the test of the Bible
 
 THE FOLLOWEKS OF THE LAMB. 253 
 
 you must bring every thing within the Bible. The in- 
 stant you go out of it it matters not whether you go 
 to the Fathers, or Bishops, or Councils, or Synods, or 
 Doctors, the instant you go without the Bible for the 
 solution of a religious question, you are upon Popish 
 ground, and must become a Papist ; but the instant you 
 open this blessed book, and appeal to it alone, you are 
 on Protestant ground, and God, our own God, will 
 teach you. 
 
 Then, in the next place, they follow Christ, not only 
 in the standard to which he appealed, but they follow 
 him in his intercourse with the world. He has said, " Ye 
 are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." 
 Now what was the nature of Christ's intercourse with 
 the world ? He did not go out of the world, as some 
 propose, but he remained in the world, as the Bible pre- 
 scribes. He prayed, " I pray not that thou shouldest 
 take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep 
 them from the evil." To retreat from the world, as 
 monks and nuns do, is cowardice to conform to the 
 world, as professing Protestants do, is sin to remain in 
 the world, and meet and conquer the world, is Chris- 
 tianity. To be in the world and not of it is the great 
 law of our existence. If your situation in life is such 
 that you cannot perform its duties without committing 
 sin against God then it is time you were out of it. But 
 then you must take care that you do not confound great 
 difficulties with absolute impossibilities. You must take 
 care, I say, before you leave the situation in which Pro- 
 vidence has placed you, that you do not confound very 
 great difficulties with absolute impossibilities : and you 
 must also take care that you do not confound your own 
 indolence and love of ease with the love of Christ and 
 obedience to his laws. It is rarely that Providence places 
 us where grace cannot keep us rarely are we placed by 
 God in the. world without our having grace given us to 
 conquer the world. And, my dear friends, with respect 
 to another point, whilst you are to be in the world and 
 not of the world, you are to take care not to go without 
 a call into the midst of tempting circumstances, for that
 
 254 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 is not being in the world and trying to conquer the world. 
 If you go into the midst of temptation voluntarily, and 
 expect that your Christianity will sustain you there, you 
 calculate erroneously. ' You first violate what you know 
 to be duty, and you then expect that the God whom you 
 have insulted will protect you in the midst of the peril 
 you have provoked. When our blessed Lord, my dear 
 friends, went into the wilderness, recollect what is said. 
 It is not said that when our great example for He was 
 our example as man just as he was our atonement as 
 God-man it is not said that he icent into the wilderness 
 to be tempted but "He was led into the wilderness to be 
 tempted of the devil." Now take care that you do not 
 go into the midst of temptation, but that if ever you are 
 found in the midst of it it has been in the leading of the 
 providence of God. But you will say, Did not our Lord 
 eat with the publicans and sinners ? Yes, he did ; and if 
 you go there exactly in the same character, and with the 
 same designs, you may eat with them too. He went not 
 to be their companion, and to enjoy their festivities ; but 
 he went to instruct, reclaim, and sanctify them. Hence 
 it has always seemed to me another ruling principle, 
 whenever you engage in any thing on which you cannot 
 ask the blessing, the grace, and the direction of God, you 
 are upon wrong ground. You. may lay this down as a 
 great rule, that if you cannot pray that God would keep 
 and guide and bless you, then you are on false ground, 
 and it is time to retire, and go back to the place from 
 whence you came. This I have always felt in refer- 
 ence to play-houses as I never was in either of them, 
 I cannot speak to what goes on ; yet, suppose the play 
 were pure suppose the actors were honourable men I 
 suppose there could be no sin in repeating the play, 
 therefore no sin in representing the characters of that 
 play ; and I could conceive a theatre to be a place Avhere 
 a Christian might go and be instructed, but I do not take 
 visionary shadows of what might be, but a true exhibi- 
 tion of what exists. The plays, I am told, are disgrace- 
 ful ; the company that you meet at the theatre, the most 
 enthusiastic admirer of the theatre must confess is not
 
 THE FOLLOWERS OF THE LAMB. 255 
 
 the company in which he would wish his sons and 
 daughters to spend many happy and agreeable hours. 
 Suppose a Christian goes to the play-house he says, I 
 am strong it may be so ; I have grace it may be so ; 
 I shall come in and go out without any contamination 
 or getting into any evil company it may be so. This 
 may be perfectly possible ; but by going there remember 
 you have set an example which others will copy are 
 you sure that your son or your daughter will copy it and 
 not contract the evil you have avoided ? Can you be re- 
 sponsible for those who will quote your example as one 
 which they may follow, but who are strangers to the grace 
 which keeps you from falling ? And if it be what some 
 of you may say it is, even questionable, hesitation in 
 matters of conscience is perilous the clear duty is to 
 avoid it ; and if you have the grace of God you will find 
 in the sacred sketches of heaven in the employments of 
 true religion in the duties and responsibilities of the 
 gospel, what will suit your taste far better than the 
 stimulating and exciting exhibitions of the play-house. 
 Some of you perhaps have been there : I will presume 
 that some there are in this assembly who have been in 
 their thoughtless days and perhaps even some who know 
 the truth, and hope that they have the grace of God 
 you came home, say eleven or twelve o'clock, did you 
 then kneel down and pour forth your heart unto God ? 
 Did you feel in the least in a temperament for prayer ? 
 Did you not feel inclined to think about any thing rather 
 than about God, or about your soul about Christ and 
 eternity ? Did you not regard such matters with a feel- 
 ing of dislike ? Did you not feel them quite uncongenial 
 with the sort of happy dream into which the excitement 
 of the theatre had thrown you ? You know it is so, and 
 it ever has been and ever will be so. Hence, my dear 
 friends, the result of the gospel will be that the grace of 
 God will separate you from the world or the world, un- 
 derstanding your character, will separate itself from you. 
 But Christians follow the Lamb next, in his con- 
 dition of life. He was the Saviour he was a man of 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was satisfied :
 
 256 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 but how few there are at the present day who are con- 
 tented with that position in which God has placed them ! 
 Instead of being satisfied, the lower stratum is ever 
 pushing to get above the upper, and one class treading 
 on the heels of those that are before them ; and all actu- 
 ated by a consuming thirst for wealth or power or 
 supremacy. 
 
 Let me add, in the next place, they follow Christ in 
 his sorrows. What was the great subject of his sorrow ? 
 We weep over our losses that is nature ; we weep over 
 our bereavements that is natural too. But this was not 
 Christ's chiefest sorrow : he wept over suffering, but the 
 great subject that produced his tears was sin. He wept 
 not at his own sufferings, but he wept for our sins. And 
 in proportion as a Christian feels what sin is, in the 
 same proportion will he learn thus to weep also. 
 
 Lastly, we are to follow Christ in his joy. What was 
 his joy? Not the joy that is carnal not the joy that 
 is sensual but the joy that is spiritual "for the joy 
 that was set before him;" that is, the joy of converted 
 sinners, a reclaimed earth, and a glorified God. 
 
 And then we must follow him with the heart not only 
 with the outward, but with the inward man. We must 
 follow Christ openly. No Christian goes to heaven by 
 stealth no Christian would be satisfied with creeping to 
 heaven. " I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ" is 
 his language. Boldly to confess Christ is his first and 
 essential duty. "Whosoever shall confess me before 
 men," says our blessed Lord, " him will I confess also 
 before my Father which is in heaven." 
 
 We must follow Christ fully and constantly not by 
 fits and starts. Having within them a fountain that ever 
 flows, because ever fed from the springs of heaven, the 
 followers of Christ go wherever he calls when he pre- 
 cedes them to prison when they must march through 
 the blazing faggots, or endure the taunts and contumely of 
 a despising world ; and following him in all the places 
 where he beckons them to follow him upon earth, at 
 length they mingle with the hundred forty and four thou- 
 sand who celebrate his praise as he sits upon his throne.
 
 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 
 
 "Therefore are they -without fault before the throne of God." 
 
 REV. xiv. 5. 
 
 I EXPLAINED in my last the great characteristics of 
 the saints of God on earth as these are described in the 
 previous portion of this chapter. They are the hundred 
 and forty and four thousand who surround the throne of 
 the Lamb, and who sing the new song, and who exhibit 
 their faith in their practice, inasmuch as " they follow 
 the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." I now turn to a 
 picture of the redeemed in heaven. You have had the 
 portrait of Christians here upon earth " they follow the 
 Lamb whithersoever he goeth." You have in the next 
 clause the portrait of these Christians in heaven " they 
 are without fault before the throne of God." By the 
 first they were justified before the world by the second 
 they are justified before God. The Church at large re- 
 cognised the image of their Master in the lives of his 
 followers, for " they followed the Lamb whithersoever 
 he went." And God recognises his own in those that 
 stand before his throne ; and He pronounces that they 
 are " without fault before that throne." 
 
 Now, the first question to which I will endeavour to 
 reply is, Who are they that are here spoken of ? Whence 
 did they come ? What are they now ? They are " with- 
 out fault." And lastly, Where are they? They are 
 " before the throne." 
 
 First, then, who are these that are before the throne 
 without spot ? I will give you a specimen list. Some of 
 the names you will recognise as household words ;
 
 238 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 others you will dimly remember, and those who were 
 present during the last Sabbath evenings I have lec- 
 tured upon the subject, will hear names, though not 
 familiar to them, yet described by me as among the 
 sealed of God, that " washed their robes and made them 
 white in the blood of the Lamb." In answering the 
 question, Who are they ? I must mention the name of 
 Abel, who, "being dead yet speaketh" upon earth, 
 whose soul is also now " without fault before the throne 
 of God." The next I will enumerate in this glorious 
 catalogue is Abraham, the " father of the faithful," 
 who went forth following God, " not knowing whither 
 he went," and who was justified by faith instrumentally, 
 iy works declaratively, and by Christ meritoriously. 
 Another of that illustrious throng was Lot, who, how- 
 ever, narrowly escaped the pollution of Sodom and the 
 condemnation of sin. There is also Isaiah, Avho was sawn 
 asunder Luke, who was hanged on an olive tree 
 Peter, who was crucified with his head downwards, and 
 innumerable others " of whom the world was not worthy." 
 And in that illustrious throng I see also the publican, 
 who cried in the agony of his soul, " God be merciful to 
 me a sinner," and whose cry of agony is now lost in the 
 song of praise, " Unto him that loved me and washed me 
 in his blood be honour and glory." I see in that con- 
 gregation the prodigal, who said, " I will arise and go 
 to my Father's house :" admitted to a home in which 
 there are no tears, from which there can be no exile, a 
 companion of " the angels who rejoiced over him as one 
 sinner that repented and returned unto God." And I 
 see amid the shining throng Mary Magdalene, who 
 poured her tears upon the Saviour's feet, and wiped 
 them with the hairs of her head, and who, having washed 
 his feet upon earth, and having been washed with his 
 blood by grace, also joins in the anthem of the redeemed, 
 " Unto him that loved me, and washed me from my sins, 
 and made me a priest unto God" " unto Him be all the 
 glory." I see Peter, too, who once denied Him upon 
 earth, and, in all his epistles, never forgot to allude with 
 deep sorrow to that denial as the bitterest thing in his 
 experience, now not denied by the Master as the Master
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 259 
 
 was denied by the servant, but accepted and justified 
 and without spot before the throne of God. I see there 
 also one pronounced by himself to be the chiefest of sin- 
 ners, "not worthy to be called an apostle" " the least 
 of all saints" "in perils by land, in perils by sea, in 
 perils among false brethren, in cold, in nakedness, and in 
 hunger;" who having triumphed over all, and having 
 been found faithful in all, is " without fault before the 
 throne of God." And I see also one sparkling gem in 
 that diadem, one bright and happy one in that throng 
 one who saw in the dying Saviour's countenance the 
 kindling beams of an unearthly glory, and as he beheld 
 that countenance, to the outward eye more marred than 
 any other man's, and yet to the inner spirit more glorious 
 than all other men's, he cried, "Lord, remember me 
 when thou comest into thy kingdom." There he is re- 
 membered now in glory, and he remembers there, as the 
 burden of his song, the love that ransomed him the 
 grace that plucked him like a brand from the burning. 
 I see others also in that congregation, if I may leave the 
 illustrious apostles whose names are familiar to us all, 
 and touch upon the names of some whose writings have 
 often been misunderstood and whose characters have as 
 often been mistaken, who nevertheless, with all their 
 faults in life, with all their imperfections in their writ- 
 ings, held the foundatiqn. I can see among them the 
 " peaceful" Irenseus, the great advocate of peace in a 
 world of conflict and also the violent Tertullian, now 
 subdued and sanctified. Amid that throng I can see the 
 tolerant Clemens of Alexandria the faithful historian 
 Eusebius the majestic Athanasius, who, Gibbon says, 
 was fit to occupy a throne ; but whom God has received 
 and admitted to a throne in glory. I can see among them 
 too the acrimonious Jerome, purified of all his fierceness, 
 and the Protestant Vigilantius, denounced and reviled 
 by Jerome, but now reconciled, and both together re- 
 joicing before the throne. I can see there the excellent 
 Basil, and his contemporary Gregory Nazianzen, and the 
 evangelical Augustine, admitted to the true city which 
 he so eloquently described ; and the golden-mouthed 
 s 2
 
 260 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Chrysostom, whose eloquence agitated the souls of the 
 masses, and yet charmed the most cultivated tastes. 
 These all had their faults upon the earth, and in many 
 of their writings were the seeds of the Apostacy ; in 
 their lives were all the infirmities of fallen humanity ; 
 but they grasped the main truth, they held the essential 
 doctrines of Christianity; and now the seeds of the 
 Apostacy have been extracted from their hearts their 
 imperfections forgiven their sins covered and in the 
 lustre of heaven and before the throne of God, they are 
 now without fault. The goodly fellowship of the pro- 
 phets the noble army of martyrs the glorious company 
 of the apostles, are all " before the throne without spot," 
 " having washed their robes and made them white in the 
 blood of the Lamb." There also is Isaac, "who blessed 
 Jacob and Esau concerning things to come" thei'e also 
 is Moses, who " refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's 
 daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the 
 people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 
 season ; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches 
 than the treasures of Egypt." There also are they 
 " who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought right- 
 eousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of 
 lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 
 the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed 
 valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 
 Women received their dead raised to life again; and 
 others were tortured, not accepting deliverance ; that 
 they might obtain a better resurrection : and others 
 had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, more- 
 over of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, 
 were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the 
 sword : they wandered about in sheepskins and goat- 
 skins ; being destitute, afflicted, tormented, (of whom 
 the world was not worthy,) they wandered in deserts 
 and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." 
 But they are now " without fault before the throne of 
 God." Referring to the links of that chain of witnesses 
 whom I enumerated in tracing the two witnesses, I 
 may add, before that throne are Sergius, and Claude of
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 261 
 
 Turin, and Agobard, Henri, and Peter Waldo. Before 
 that throne there is Wicliffe, the morning star of the 
 Reformation, whose dead dust was denied a grave upon 
 the earth, but whose living soul occupies a throne in 
 heaven. There too I can perceive John IIuss, the faith- 
 ful Reformer, who found the promises of priests and the 
 pledges of kings all fail him, but who now finds before 
 the throne that the promises of God were all yea and 
 amen. I see there, too, Martin Luther, the monk that 
 shook the world ; whose life was a drama, in which pon- 
 tiffs and kings were but the shifting scenery the trans- 
 lator of the Bible the vindicator of the glory of Christ 
 who bequeathed to us a Protestant Church, an open 
 Bible ; his rugged soul subdued his indomitable heart 
 beating with the pulses of immortality amid the light 
 that never knows a cloud without fault and he had 
 several upon earth before the throne of God and of the 
 Lamb. I see too, amid that glorious assembly, Calvin, 
 whose grave is not to be detected among the acres of 
 this world, but whose spirit now feeds upon that living 
 bread he so largely distributed to others. I behold there 
 Ridley, who cheered his brother amid the blazing fag- 
 gots by uttering that memorable prophecy, which God 
 grant may be fulfilled to the latest generation, " Be of 
 good cheer, brother, for we shall this day light a candle 
 in England, that, by God's grace, never shall be put 
 out." I view there also the amiable, and learned, and 
 accomplished Melancthon, enjoying in heaven the peace 
 which he sighed and prayed for upon earth the stern 
 and indomitable Knox, who " pulled down the nests that 
 the rooks might never again return" who feared not 
 the face of clay who spoke the truth to princes, and 
 treated the man with the gold ring as he treated the 
 man with the beggar's wallet the stern, the indomitable, 
 the faithful, the holy, who feared God, and feared none 
 besides now without fault before the throne of God. I 
 see Pascal, whose letters did such havoc among the 
 Jesuits, and whose thoughts have conveyed such comfort 
 to Christians ; and Quesnel, condemned by the bull of 
 Clement XL, and pronounced to be a heretic, but ac-
 
 262 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 quitted by the Judge of all the earth, and welcomed as a 
 saint into glory. And will you allow me for charity 
 should ever go as far as truth to say that in that shining 
 throng are some who were in the Church of Rome even, 
 but who, like Martin Boos and Fenelon, were not alto- 
 gether of it ; men that singed their outer garments only 
 by the fires of the Apostacy, but whose souls were pre- 
 served safe by the Son of God. And I see in that illus- 
 trious throng Clarkson and the eminent Wilberforce, 
 who achieved for England's colonies what is the charac- 
 teristic of England's shores, that the moment the slave 
 touches them, that moment the shackles will drop from 
 his limbs, and he be free as the mightiest of England's 
 nobles. I see there Bunyan, who has passed all his 
 perils, and has crossed the river, and now dwells in the 
 glorious city ; and Baxter, who now enjoys the rest in 
 heaven he so beautifully depicted upon earth ; and John 
 Newton, who was converted to God when he stood at 
 the helm on a stormy night, and in a tempestuous sea, 
 by recollecting a text which his mother taught him when 
 he prattled as an infant at her knee ; and there too the 
 sainted Flavel, and the beautiful and amiable Leighton, 
 and Simeon of Cambridge, and Elliot the apostle of the 
 Indians, and Henry Martyn, and Oberlin, who has left to 
 statesmen a lesson that the way to civilize is first of all 
 to Christianize. I can perceive, too, in that assembly, 
 Robert Hall, whose beautiful style was only surpassed 
 by his lofty piety ; and Andrew Fuller, who excelled all 
 scholars, and yet studied at no university ; and John 
 Wesley, and Watts, whose hymns are sung where cold 
 cathedral chants and Gregorian-tones are unheard and 
 unknown ; and Whitefield, who evangelized the masses ; 
 and Williams, who perished on his mission ; and last, 
 though not least, one whose intellect was equal to the 
 intellect of any of them, and whose piety was not sur- 
 passed by the piety of any of them the late lamented 
 Thomas Chalmers of Edinburgh. 
 
 The removal of this great and good man, as I have 
 elsewhere stated, and now repeat, is a loss not to a 
 party, but to the whole Christian Church. His name
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 263 
 
 will last with the literature and language of our country. 
 Over the grave of so illustrious a man so great a 
 benefactor to the Church so distinguished an orna- 
 ment to his country all party spirit, all sectarian 
 feeling should be quelled ; and we should show that, 
 whatever our opinions may be, we are not incapable of 
 appreciating transcendent greatness, or of doing homage 
 to unrivalled worth. No party disputes no denomina- 
 tional differences no remaining recollection of rash 
 expressions or hasty censure should be suffered for one 
 moment to stifle our Christian feelings, or dilute our ex- 
 pression of regret, or dim that admiration or lessen that 
 gratitude we feel for the life and labours of so great a 
 man, so good a minister. 
 
 He is now indeed before the throne and without fault, 
 far above the dark vortex of terrestrial strifes, in which 
 frail spirits vex and fret. He lives amid the light and 
 breathes the love of eternity. He has not ceased to be ; 
 he has merely ceased to minister in this tabernacle. He 
 has merely laid aside the robe in which he ministered as 
 a faithful Levite without the vail. In his case death 
 has removed only the limits and restrictions of the soul ; 
 it has extinguished, not life, but its troubles it has 
 shut up all the springs of sorrow, and opened at the same 
 time all the fountains of eternal joy. He has died only 
 that he may die no more. 
 
 His great genius would have raised him to the very 
 loftiest place of power, pre-eminence, and even gain in 
 any other profession. But all his talents were conse- 
 crated to the cause and enlisted in the service of his 
 Lord. An astronomer a mathematician a philoso- 
 pher, he yet preferred to be felt while living, and to be 
 remembered when dead, as the earnest and devoted 
 Christian. His reason was guided by the inspiration, 
 and his imagination kindled from the altars of Christi- 
 anity. In Church politics he could be dazzled by a 
 crotchet, and led about, the almost unquestioning victim 
 of subtle and unscrupulous spirits ; but in the higher 
 walks of eternal truth in the vindication of the gospel 
 in the defence of its glory, its excellence, and its truth,
 
 264 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 he was the independent thinker the mighty logician 
 the eloquent orator. With the simplicity of a child he 
 combined the intellectual calibre of a giant. Whatever 
 great truth he discussed he made so luminous, that few 
 could fail to see it ; while at the same time he clothed it 
 with such and so varied splendour, that all retained the 
 impression even after the minuter features had perished 
 from their memory. With a mode of address the most 
 unprepossessing a style and phraseology idiomatic and 
 uncouth and an accent utterly wanting in music to 
 southern ears, he yet riveted the minds of the thought- 
 less, mastered the objections of the sceptic, and roused 
 the conscience and stirred the responsibilities of the 
 ungodly, and led all captive as beneath the might and 
 witchery of an irresistible spell. Long the minister of 
 one of the largest parishes in Glasgow, he set there an 
 example of earnest piety and untiring labour. He had 
 a word of power for all. The merchant felt Christianity, 
 by means of his commercial sermons, present in the very 
 centre of his circumstances, prescribing duties, and 
 promising rewards, and rightfully exacting a tribute from 
 all his gains for the altar of Him whose smiles made 
 him rich, and whose grace alone could make him happy. 
 He followed the sceptic into all his retreats, and overtook 
 and overwhelmed him in each in succession. At one 
 time he would track his course along subterranean mines, 
 amid fossil remains and fragments of aboriginal chaos, 
 and confound him there with the undeniable footprints 
 of Deity. At another he would rise on untiring wing, 
 and pursue him from star to star from system to system 
 and confute him there, and bring back to this earth 
 as the evidence of his victory a more glorious apocalypse 
 of the power, resources, and glory of God. 
 
 Nor did he less excel in exhibiting the great and dis- 
 tinguishing doctrines of the everlasting gospel. All 
 his discourses are inlaid with these. He, of all men, 
 most clearly detected the links of connexion among the 
 doctrines of the gospel, long hidden, and beautiful affi- 
 nities unseen by ordinary minds, but visible to his ; and 
 truths that seemed to the outward eye isolated and dis-
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 265 
 
 connected, he showed to cohere by fibres running below 
 and binding together all the trees in the paradise of God, 
 one with the other, and all with the Tree of Life. He 
 never handled a doctrine without throwing forth masses 
 of truth that were like ingots of gold, to ordinary minds. 
 It would not be easy to express the greatness of the ob- 
 ligations of the Christian ministry to Dr. Chalmers ; and 
 it would not be more easy to state how much men of 
 science owe to him. He was the first who made the 
 scholars and literati and philosophers of the nineteenth 
 century feel their littleness beside the apostles and evan- 
 gelists of the first. None were so successful in extort- 
 ing from all the sciences tribute for Christianity, or so 
 happy in casting light on the most distinguishing pecu- 
 liarities of evangelical religion from the various disco- 
 veries of modern science. In his writings all the sciences 
 are seen to be as the handmaids of religion, approaching 
 the great temple of everlasting truth, spreading new em- 
 broideries on its shrines, and laying their most precious 
 things on her altar. Astronomy, in his pages, owns all 
 her splendour borrowed from the Sun of righteousness. 
 Geology empties the deepest mines at his bidding, and 
 presents her most brilliant gems and her most precious 
 metals, as dim reflections of his glory. Botany weaves 
 around the cross her amaranthine garlands ; and New- 
 ton comes from his starry home Linnasus from his 
 flowery resting-place and Werner and Hutton from 
 their subterranean graves, at the voice of Chalmers, to 
 acknowledge that all they learned and elicited in their 
 respective provinces has only served to show more 
 clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is enthroned on the 
 riches of the universe, and that the voice of Christianity 
 is the voice of God. This is no ordinary demonstration. 
 Yet it was the demonstration actually achieved by the 
 great and accomplished man, whose loss is not the 
 calamity of a sect, but a catastrophe to the Christian 
 world. 
 
 His death, however, was not a mere fact occurring 
 amid the tumbling accidents of a chaotic world, but an 
 appointment of God. " It is appointed unto all men to
 
 266 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 die." Were we to regard his removal as a mere fact, 
 we should place it in the hands of blind and unintelligent 
 fate ; but in regarding it as the appointment of God, we 
 attach to it a holy significance. It is seen as coming 
 from the wisdom which precludes all supposition of error, 
 and from the love of which we can have no suspicion. 
 The day, the nature, and the place of our death are all 
 fixed by our Father. We are each 
 
 " Immortal till our work is done." 
 
 Chalmers ceased to be on earth when there was no 
 more work for him to do. His mission was done his 
 journey finished ; and the voice that guided him in all 
 his ways addressed him, " Come up hither ; those hopes 
 I impressed upon your heart shall now be realized ; 
 those longings of yours after a perfection, a glory, a per- 
 manence, which earth could not satisfy, shall now be 
 satisfied ; that great soul of thine which I made, shall 
 now be relieved of its limits and shackles. My finger 
 will now open all its stops, and awaken the awful har- 
 mony of its thousand strings, and give it powers to mag- 
 nify Me, such as it never imagined on earth. Come up 
 hither : in this new Eden the leaves of the Tree of 
 Knowledge are all luminous, and cast around them no 
 shadow. Come up hither ; and see the only Free Church 
 in the universe not the phantom, the delusion, which 
 man calls so, but the reality which God pronounces so 
 ' Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother 
 of us all.'" 
 
 The name of Chalmers will be cherished by the good 
 and great of every party through many generations. He 
 will rise in the recollection of future ages, not in the 
 robes of a sect, but in the white garments of Catholic 
 Christianity ; his first love restored without its alloy, 
 and his last errors erased, and without a vestige ; his 
 dead dust awaiting the first beam of the resurrection 
 morn, and his glorified spirit joining with a great mul- 
 titude of many sects and tongues and countries, saying, 
 " Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in 
 his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 267 
 
 God and his Father ; to him be glory and dominion for 
 ever and ever. Amen." 
 
 These all are before the throne Avithout spot. I can 
 see there also the babe that withered like a bud prema- 
 turely from its mother's bosom ; and I can see there, 
 too, the son, the daughter, that seemed to have passed 
 through the earth like an angel, and you only knew it 
 was an angel by the vision of the departing wing. And 
 I can see there the father your father whose grey hairs 
 were the crown of glory ; whose deeds were articles of 
 faith whose conduct was his confession of faith who 
 could say, " When the ear heard me then it blessed me, 
 and when the eye saw me it gave witness to me : be- 
 cause I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless 
 and him that had none to help him. The blessing of 
 him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused 
 the widow's heart to sing for joy." I can see there in- 
 numerable others friends and relatives who preferred 
 to be better than they seemed rather than to seem better 
 than they were ; who said little upon earth, but who saw 
 very far into glory. I see there is no nook of humanity 
 in which a Saviour may not be discovered no portion of 
 human experience where that Saviour is inaccessible. I 
 see there the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, 
 and those that were persecuted for righteousness' sake. 
 I can see there all those who were invited by the King 
 of kings, " Come, ye blessed of my Father : for I was an 
 hungred, and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye 
 gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; 
 naked, and ye clothed me ; sick and in prison, and ye 
 visited me ;" these, from all the varieties of human life 
 from all the vicissitudes of human experience, we may 
 pronounce, without bigotry on the one hand or exclusive- 
 ness on the other, to be " before the throne of God :" 
 and, let me tell you, you will meet in heaven many whom 
 bigotry proscribed, and ignorance mistook, and uncharit- 
 ableness excluded ; while you will miss in heaven great 
 professors whom you made sure to meet there. 
 
 So far, then, I have endeavoured to answer the first 
 question ; let me now proceed to answer the second.
 
 268 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Whence do they come ? They come from every part 
 of the inhabitable globe ; and the Lord himself is my 
 authority : " They shall come from the east and from the 
 west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Ja- 
 cob, in my kingdom." The African from his burning 
 sands the Laplander from his everlasting snow, shall be 
 there the Arab from his wilds the Druse from his 
 mountain fastnesses the antediluvian, the patriarch of 
 ancient days the children of Shem, and Hani, and Ja- 
 phet, that met first in the ark, careering upon the waves 
 of the deluge that laid Avaste the world, till they rested 
 upon the summit of Ararat the children of these, the 
 grey fathers of the human race, shall meet again ; first 
 in Christ, the true Ark, by faith ; and lastly in heaven, 
 the great antitype of Ararat, no more to look forth 
 upon a world depopulated and dismantled by the flood, 
 but to bask amid the splendours of the beatific vision, 
 and to be for ever " without fault before the throne of 
 God." They come not only from various countries, but 
 they come from various scenes of suffering some from 
 hunger, and cold, and nakedness, and peril some from 
 sick-beds, and hospitals, and prisons, and inquisitions 
 some shall come from battle sods, from Marengo, and 
 Austerlitz, and Waterloo and some from the silent 
 depths of the ocean the slain of Camperdown, and Tra- 
 falgar, and the Nile and some from the stony pyramids 
 and many whose winding-sheets have been the sands 
 of the desert, and whose requiem has been chanted by 
 the waves of the desert sea. No circumstances can con- 
 ceal them whom God bids rise no distance can keep 
 away those Avhom God summons. And they shall come, 
 too, from various sections of the Church universal. No 
 sect has a monopoly of Christians, because no sect has a 
 monopoly of the gospel. There are diversities of gifts, 
 we are told, but one Spirit. The distinctions that are 
 made between sect and sect are paper walls, that will 
 be consumed by the flames of the last fire : those points 
 and practices about which true Christians quarrel, Avill 
 pass away like straw and straw huts before the over- 
 whelming flood of universal light, and universal love ;
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 269 
 
 and it will be found at that day that the things for which 
 Churchmen and Dissenters quarrel were but microscopic 
 points, and that those things about which Churchmen and 
 Dissenters agree were majestic as the attributes and en- 
 during as the throne of the Deity. I have often thought 
 that the following little incident recorded of a good man 
 was a very beautiful one : A sceptic addressed him, and 
 said, " What will become of all the sects into which you 
 Christians are split at the j udgment day of Christ ? " The 
 ingenious yet scriptural answer was, " God will say to 
 one, 'What are you?' 'I am an Independent/ 'Sit 
 you there.' To another, 'What are you?' 'I am a 
 Presbyterian.' ' Sit you there;' for I believe that, not- 
 withstanding the authority of our Puseyite brethren, 
 even a Presbyterian can get to heaven. Another will 
 be asked, 'Who are you?' The answer will be, 'I am 
 a Churchman ;' and he will be told, ' Sit you there.' And 
 a fourth will be asked, ' What are you ? ' The answer will 
 be, ' I am a Christian ;' and the commission will be given 
 him from God, ' Walk about heaven in any place you 
 like.'" For as it is true that one star differeth from 
 another star in glory, so it is true that he that hath the 
 most of bigotry will have the least of heaven, and he 
 that feels all things subordinate to Christ, and Him 
 crucified, will have the largest space to walk in. I be- 
 lieve, too, that those who are before the throne will be 
 from every form of government. The stern republican 
 will be there the accomplished monarchist will be there 
 also, and there will be no nation under heaven which 
 will not contribute its quota the subjects of uncivilized 
 governments and the victims of cruel ones will be there. 
 They are a great multitude much greater than the 
 Antinomian will allow fewer than the Universalist 
 believes " a great multitude whom no man can number, 
 of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues ;" 
 and this is their harmony, " Salvation to our God which 
 sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." 
 
 What are they ? The answer was given in the text, 
 " they are without fault before the throne." But I may 
 be asked, Were they always so ? The answer must be,
 
 270 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Not so. For hear what the Apostle says, "Be not de- 
 ceived : neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor idolaters, 
 nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, 
 nor covetous, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit 
 the kingdom of God. And SUCH WERE some of you : 
 but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justi- 
 fied in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of 
 our God." Here upon earth Christians need from 
 Christians the continual exercise of candour and of 
 charity ; and that man who knows his own heart best, 
 will always be found the first to pardon the failings and 
 sympathize with the infirmities of a brother. But in 
 heaven they do not need the exercise of candour they 
 do not require that their acts should be charitably con- 
 strued : there each soul is radiant with light ; each 
 affection inlaid with love ; each motive is infinite charity ; 
 and the end of each is exclusively the glory of God ; for 
 " they are without fault." The God that sits upon the 
 throne examines them the eye that penetrates all 
 destinies, and pierces all darkness, analyzes them the 
 Judge of all hearts pronounces their character to be 
 " without fault." What made them so ? " They washed 
 their robes and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb." And why should not you be so ? There is 
 no reason upon earth but your own reluctance. My 
 dear friends, there are but two classes in this assembly ; 
 those who are perfectly justified by the righteousness of 
 Christ, and who, as far as their title is concerned, are at 
 this moment without any flaw or fault ; and those who 
 are without any interest in it at all. Let me ask, to 
 which of these classes you belong ? The blood of Christ 
 is accessible to you the atonement is freely offered 
 to you God beseeches you by us, be ye reconciled 
 unto God. 
 
 Where are they? That question is answered in 
 another portion of the book of Revelation. " And he asked 
 me, Who are these, and whence came they ? And I said 
 unto him, Sir, thou knowest." You may recollect what I 
 stated to you, that Burns, who had all the sensibility of 
 the poet, if he failed often in the duties of the Christian,
 
 THE FAULTLESS CONGREGATION. 271 
 
 said lie never could read these words without weeping. 
 " These are they which came out of great tribulation, 
 and have washed their robes and made them white in 
 the blood of the Lamb : " and then notice what follows : 
 " therefore," on this account, " therefore are they before 
 the throne of God." Here is what they are doing : 
 " they serve God day and night in his temple, and he 
 that sitteth upon the throne shall dwell among them : 
 they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; 
 neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat ; but 
 the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
 them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters ; 
 and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." And 
 the place that they occupy is, first, the place of great dig- 
 nity. They are made kings and priests unto God : they 
 shall sit upon thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 
 And in the next place, it is a place of great safety. No 
 fallen spirit shall be admitted into that better paradise to 
 seduce them. No criterion of creatureship by attendance 
 to which they shall stand, and by neglect of which they 
 shall fall, shall be there. They are placed before that 
 throne, and amid the lustre of that crown, where there is 
 nothing that defileth where there are no separating 
 elements that divide the creature from his God, the re- 
 deemed sinner from his glorious and revealed Saviour : 
 the crown that is theirs " fadeth not away ;" the inherit- 
 ance that is theirs " is incorruptible and undefiled" "a 
 city that hath foundations, its builder and its maker God ;" 
 their " kingdom is an everlasting kingdom," that never 
 shall be moved. It is the place of perfect satisfaction. 
 " When I awake," says the Psalmist, " I shall be satisfied 
 with thy likeness." " Eye hath not seen, ear hath not 
 heard, and heart hath not conceived the things that God 
 hath prepared for them that love him." In that blessed 
 land their robes have no moth to consume them the 
 trees have no worm to gnaw them the gold of that land 
 has no rust to corrupt it its melodies have no inter- 
 mingling minors the last tear has been shed, the last 
 pang felt, the last agony endured ; the very recollection 
 of orphanage and widowhood has passed away, and the
 
 272 ATOCALYTTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 hours of heaven, like the hours of a sun-dial, are mea- 
 sured only by sunshine. They are in a place of dignity 
 and safety, and before the throne of God. They are in 
 a place, too, of perfect joy. Theirs is a joy that endures 
 for ever, and is unmixed with grief. And, lastly, they 
 are in a place of complete reunion and recognition. I 
 believe that in heaven we shall recognise amid the lustre 
 of glory, the countenances on which we looked with tears 
 upon sick-beds on earth. I believe that in heaven the 
 parent will recognise his children, and the children recog- 
 nise the parent, and the redeemed friend the redeemed 
 friend, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
 in their Father's kingdom. Thus the very language 
 used by the Apostle in order to comfort those who were 
 bereaved, implies that they will recognise their lost ones 
 when they meet in glory ; for he says, " I would not have 
 you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are 
 asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no 
 hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
 even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring 
 with him. For this we say unto you by the Avord of 
 the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the 
 coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are 
 asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven 
 with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with 
 the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall rise 
 first ; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught 
 up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord 
 in the air : and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 
 Wherefore comfort one another with these words." 
 What is the comfort here intended to be conveyed ? Have 
 any of you lost your relatives ? You are weeping for 
 them as those that have no hope ; but here is your com- 
 fort ; they are not lost for ever ; you shall meet them 
 again, and if it be comfort to anticipate that meeting, the 
 comfort would be lost if there were no recognition when 
 that meeting takes place. Therefore believe that the 
 redeemed in heaven will recognise each other. Those 
 pictures of the departed that are preserved in your 
 memory as in a picture-gallery freshened by every cir-
 
 THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE REDEEMED. 273 
 
 curflstance, and revived by every recollection, are these 
 foretokens of the originals ; ties severed on earth shall 
 be reunited in heaven, and friends and circles dissolved 
 by death, shall be completed never to be broken. 
 
 Such, then, are my replies to these questions ; but the 
 great practical question still remains, Are we to be amidst 
 that throng? Are we to join in that eternal and glo- 
 rious choir ? Are we, my dear friends, in our inmost ; 
 hearts conscious of a great change that has passed upon 
 us, without which we cannot see the kingdom of God ? 
 It will be no advantage to you in the issue to have cal- 
 culated exactly who shall be saved, or to have speculated 
 upon who shall be lost, if we perish ourselves. " Lord, 
 are there few that be saved ?" was a question that was 
 once asked before, and the answer was, " Strive to enter 
 in at the strait gate." Were you in a ship that was sink- 
 ing inch by inch in the waves, would you stand counting 
 how many perish and how many escape, and care not 
 that the deck on which you stood was inch by inch dis- 
 appearing in the fathomless abyss ? Such conduct would 
 be folly. But is not this the conduct of the man who 
 would stand counting the probable numbers of the lost 
 and the probable numbers of the saved, and forget that 
 his own soul is unjustified, unsanctified, unpardoned, by 
 the blood of Jesus and by the Spirit of our God ? Let 
 me ask you, then, my dear friends, are you trusting on 
 a Saviour's righteousness as your only title to that pre- 
 sence ? Do you look upon that Saviour's blood as the 
 only element in the universe that can forgive you? 
 Can you say, my dear friends, if you were called upon 
 to die this moment, there is no reason upon earth in me, 
 but every reason external to me, in the shed blood of my 
 Lord and my Saviour, why all my sins should be for- 
 given, all my trespasses covered, and I justified and sanc- 
 tified, and glorified for ever ? Have you washed your 
 robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb ? 
 Is it not a strange thing that we leave no question upon 
 earth unsettled except the most momentous question of 
 all ? Is it not strange that there is nothing in politics 
 nothing in science nothing in literature nothing
 
 274 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 in news nothing in astronomy nothing in geography, 
 that we do not like to know ; but this question, " Am I 
 a child of God, or am I still in the flesh ? " is a ques- 
 tion which we leave unsettled and undetermined. Is it 
 not a fact, that if you speak of poetry men's counte- 
 nances will glow ? If you speak of politics they will in- 
 stantly enter into it ? If you speak of trade, commerce, 
 merchandise, they will discuss every point connected 
 with them eloquently and readily ? But the instant you 
 speak to a man of that question which ought to absorb 
 every other question, his countenance instantly falls : he 
 does not say, Am I my brother's keeper ? but he says, 
 practically, that religion is a thing for the Church for a 
 funeral, for a sick-bed. Here lies a great obstruction to 
 your being Christians : you think that Christianity is a 
 capital thing for sick-beds, and funerals, and absolutions ; 
 but you think it not a thing for bridals, and for business, 
 and for the happy, and for the sunnier parts of human 
 life: in other words, your idea is that religion is a 
 nauseous drug, which must be taken in order to give us 
 eternal life ; but the longer we put off the nauseous 
 draught, the more happy shall we be, and not the less 
 safe when we come to die. Oh what a grievous misap- 
 prehension, my dear friends ! each truth is a leaf from 
 the tree of life, to give balm to the bleeding, and healing 
 to the broken heart. The reception of the gospel of 
 Jesus is the reception into your hearts of an element 
 that will sanctify every trial that will give emphasis to 
 every happy beating of your hearts that will make you 
 not only holier men, but will make you what you never 
 otherwise could have been, perfectly happy men. And 
 if it be true, as our wise men or serious men say, that the 
 days of trial are rapidly approaching if it be true, as 
 the wisest and most wary students of prophecy believe, 
 that a great crisis is coming, more terrible than any 
 that has yet overtaken our world, what will sustain you 
 therein ? what will support you ? what will give you 
 perfect peace ? what will protect you from being scathed 
 by the storm, and overwhelmed by the flood, except that 
 you know this, that come what may, nothing can come
 
 THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE REDEEMED. 275 
 
 that has a particle of wrath in it ; and come the worst 
 that can come, the very stroke that severs me from 
 earth is the stroke that sends me to the throne of God, 
 where I shall be before that throne, without fault, for 
 ever and ever. 
 
 Whence is it, my dear hearers, that you have so 
 wretched views of the gospel of Jesus ? Why do you not 
 open your Bibles and read this good news ? The object of 
 it was as much to make men happy, as it was to make 
 men holy. When I say to you, be Christians, I simply 
 say to you, to translate it into other words, be happy. 
 The gospel is the panacea for all grievances the balm 
 for all bleeding hearts the only thing that can give a 
 peace which the world cannot give, and which the world 
 cannot take away. My dear friends, do not speculate 
 about Christianity, but receive and live it. Do not ask 
 for an analysis of the drug, if you will call it a drug, 
 but make up your minds to taste it ; see what its effects 
 are : no man yet from a death-bed said, " I have tried 
 the gospel, and I have found it neither make me holy 
 nor happy." Did you ever hear a man say so ? Never. 
 You have heard man only regret that he has not been so 
 holy as it was intended to make him, nor so happy as it 
 was calculated to render him. My dear friends, were all 
 the people of this great realm Christians, then this great 
 realm would be indeed a glorious one. The revolution 
 that is wanted, the reformation that is needed, is not in 
 the palace, nor in the parliament, nor in our courts, 
 nor in our churches, but in your hearts, and in your 
 homes ; for if men were Christians at home, the whole 
 of society would be Christians abroad. And if the 
 people were Christian all, from the highest to the 
 lowest then God, our own God, would bless us ; the 
 earth would yield her increase, and the nations that 
 were spectators of our country round about, would pro- 
 nounce that people to be indeed a happy people whose 
 God is the Lord. 
 
 Go, then, this day to your homes, each to his own 
 closet ; and from the very depths of your heart acknow- 
 ledge how truly ruined, how sinful, how guilty you 
 T 2
 
 276 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 are, and pray thus unto the Lord Jesus : "I want to 
 make the experiment of Christianity : I want to try 
 whether what that preacher in Exeter Hall told me is a 
 lie or a great truth, when he said that the gospel is in- 
 tended to make men happy, just as much as it is intended 
 to make them holy. O wash me with thy blood, and 
 clothe me with thy righteousness ; lead me by thy Spirit 
 open mine eyes renew my heart make me a Chris- 
 tian I would test it help me : " and as sure as there 
 is a God in heaven, you will thank the preacher as the 
 instrument who proposed the experiment, and you will 
 give to Him who crowned the experiment with his bless- 
 ing, honour, and thanksgiving, and glory, and praise, 
 now and for ever.
 
 LECTURE XV. 
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 
 
 " And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up 
 
 out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his 
 
 horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 
 " And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet 
 
 were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion : 
 
 and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great au- 
 thority. 
 " And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death ; and 
 
 his deadly wound was healed : and all the world wondered after 
 
 the beast. 
 " And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the 
 
 beast : and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto 
 
 the beast ? who is able to make war with him ? 
 " And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things 
 
 and blasphemies ; and power was given unto him to continue 
 
 forty and two months. 
 
 " And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blas- 
 pheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in 
 
 heaven. 
 " And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to 
 
 overcome them : and power was given him over all kindreds, 
 
 and tongues, and nations. 
 " 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. 
 " If any man have an ear, let him hear. 
 " He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity : he that 
 
 killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is 
 
 the patience and the faith of the saints. 
 " And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth ; and he 
 
 had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 
 " And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and 
 
 causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the 
 
 first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 
 " And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down 
 
 from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 
 " And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those 
 
 miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast ; 
 
 saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an
 
 278 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 
 " And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that 
 
 the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many 
 
 as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 
 " And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and 
 
 bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads : 
 "And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, 
 
 or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 
 " Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the 
 
 number of the beast : for it is the number of a man ; and his 
 
 number is six hundred threescore and six." REV. xiii. 
 
 I HAVE laid before you on a previous occasion that 
 beautiful piece of biography, the history of Christ's true 
 Church. I have traced its chequered story under the 
 name of the two witnesses for Christ, first through the 
 Paulicians in the East, and next through the Waldenses 
 in the West, onward to the day when the witnesses were 
 slain, and rose again, and were exalted to the skies. I have 
 shown you the same great truth in another symbolical 
 exhibition of Christ's Church, not as a gorgeous and pow- 
 erful hierarchy, but as a little flock a very few under 
 the symbol of the woman hidden in the wilderness for a 
 time, times, and half a time, or its equivalent, forty and two 
 months, or the equivalent of that, 1260 years. We have 
 thus seen Christ's Church, the Church within a Church, 
 the Church invisible, as it has been called in contrast with 
 the Church visible. We have seen visible Christianity 
 rolling along like a turbid stream, changed altogether in 
 its character from the Christianity that was sealed by the 
 death of Christ, inspired by the Spirit, and preached by 
 the apostles of Jesus ; but we have seen beneath the 
 turbid torrent a little silver streamlet, crystalline and 
 beautiful, flowing from the rock that was smitten upon 
 Calvary, and speeding onward with unbroken current 
 until it shall mingle with the eternal and glorious main. 
 Having thus seen Christ's true Church, I proceed to 
 show you what was the state of the visible Church 
 that assumed the name of Christian. This may not be 
 so interesting in our view as the sketch of the true 
 Church, but it may be no less instructive and useful 
 to our minds : and it is most important, my dear friends, 
 that we should understand this. The great aim of the
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 279 
 
 predominating tendencies of the day is to make the visible 
 Church, in some shape, be it Episcopacy, or Presbyte- 
 rianism, or Independency, or Wesleyanism, or whatever 
 it be and more especially in one of these to make the 
 visible Church to be identical with Christ's true Church. 
 Dr. Hook, Dr. Dodsworth, Mr. Perceval, Mr. Newman, 
 all of them declare that the Church of Rome, prior to 
 the Reformation, was the true Church, and that separa- 
 tion from that visible corporation was a sin or a mis- 
 fortune, and union with such a corporation as it now 
 exists in some shape or another is duty ; now, in oppo- 
 sition to that, we believe that no visible Church upon 
 earth is exclusively or alone the redeemed and regenerat- 
 ed Church. There are tares in the Church of England, 
 tares in the Church of Scotland, tares among Dissenters : 
 the wheat and the chaff are mingled together, the gold 
 and alloy are mixed in one mass : man cannot wholly 
 separate them ; God, in his judgments or in his mercy, I 
 believe, will very soon separate them. 
 
 Now in turning your attention to this most graphic 
 description of the wild beast for that is the true trans- 
 lation of the word Qqpiov that was to rise from the sea, 
 and who exercises all the terrific functions that are here 
 ascribed to him, it will be necessary that I show you that 
 this is not an isolated description, but one that carries 
 forth only more fully what is stated and impressed in 
 others. Thus, for instance, the description contained in 
 chap. xvii. of this book is substantially the same ; and I 
 am anxious this evening, I may just remark, by way of 
 parenthesis, to give you a full sketch of the wild beast 
 that is represented as rising out of the sea, in order that, 
 having given you in succession the Apocalyptic view of 
 the true Church and the Apocalyptic view of the false 
 Church, or the description of Christ and Antichrist, I 
 may the next two or three Sabbath evenings enter upon 
 an exposition of that portion of the Apocalypse that bears 
 upon the very age in which we live, or the pouring out 
 of seven vials. This evening, therefore, instead of com- 
 menting much upon the several points, I will give you, 
 as briefly, but as clearly as I can, a comprehensive 
 sketch of the whole.
 
 280 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 You will perceive that the seventeenth chapter con- 
 tains at the 8th verse a description, almost identical in 
 words, certainly identical in meaning, with the descrip- 
 tion I have this evening read from the thirteenth chap- 
 ter. " The beast that thou sawest," it is written in the 
 seventeenth chapter, "that was and is not" and I beg 
 of you to note each clause, because then you will see more 
 clearly the force of my explanation the beast that thou 
 sawest was and is not ; and shall ascend out of the bot- 
 tomless pit, and go into perdition : and it is said, " they 
 that dwell on the earth shall wonder," always excepting 
 one class, " whose names are in the book of life : " and I 
 am sure you must be struck with this exception : for 
 wherever a sketch of the Apostacy is given, there is nearly 
 always given this excepted class "the sealed ones" of 
 the 4th century " the woman in the wilderness " of the 
 1260 years " the two witnesses" of the same time or, 
 as it is here stated, those " whose names are written in 
 the book of life from the foundation of the world." The 
 explanation is next given us " Here is the mind that hath 
 wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which 
 the woman sitteth," that is the first Apocalyptic meaning 
 of the seven heads ; then the chapter goes on, " And there 
 are seven kings, five are fallen, and one is, and the other 
 is not yet come, and when he is come he must continue a 
 short space. And the beast that was and is not, even he 
 is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into per- 
 dition. And the ten horns are ten kings who have re- 
 ceived no kingdom as yet ; but receive power, as kings, 
 one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and 
 shall give their power and strength unto the beast. 
 These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb 
 shall overcome them." Now you will notice the points 
 of coincidence between the thirteenth chapter I have 
 this evening read, and the sketch from the seventeenth 
 which I now read. 
 
 First of all, each of the sketches is associated with ten 
 kings and ten kingdoms ; each of the wild beasts has 
 the name of blasphemy ; each of them makes war on the 
 saints ; and each of them is associated with an ecclesias- 
 tical or priestly power : and the apparent discrepancies,
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 281 
 
 if I had time to solve them, would, when solved, only 
 prove more clearly the perfect identity which subsists 
 between them. 
 
 Now, having seen the general parallelism of the wild 
 beasts described in these two chapters, let me notice the 
 points of contact between them, and a short sketch taken 
 from the book of Daniel, which has often been referred 
 to in prophetic inquiries. It is in chap. vii. 19. I wish 
 you to see clearly each characteristic in order to under- 
 stand the exposition which follows. " Then I would know 
 the truth of the fourth beast which was diverse from all 
 others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, 
 and his nails of brass ; which devoured, brake in pieces, 
 and stamped the residue with his feet. And of the ten 
 horns that were in his head, and of the other which came 
 up, and before whom three fell." Now I shall show you 
 hereafter that of the ten horns, or ten kingdoms, three 
 were to fall, or be cast off, or extirpated by the beast, 
 or that "little horn" represented in the 13th chapter as 
 the wild beast from the sea, or in the 17th as the wild 
 beast from the abyss, in Daniel as the little horn ; which 
 little horn, he says, had eyes, and a mouth that spake very 
 great things. He had eyes like a man ; he was a seer. 
 What is a bishop ? an overseer ; iiriaKotrof, an overseer, 
 not an over-looker, but a looker-over ; this little horn was 
 an ecclesiastical power, then, he says, had eyes, and a 
 mouth speaking very great things. " I beheld, and the 
 same horn made war with the saints and prevailed against 
 them." Now notice again ; how long ? " Until the An- 
 cient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints 
 of the Most High ; and the time came that the saints pos- 
 sessed the kingdom. Thus, he said, the fourth beast shall 
 be the fourth kingdom upon earth, and shall be diverse 
 from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and 
 shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. And the ten 
 horns," notice how Daniel coincides with the Apocalypse, 
 " and the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings 
 which shall arise, and another shall arise after them ; 
 and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue 
 three kings. And he shall speak great words against
 
 282 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most 
 High, and think to change times and laws : and they 
 shall be given into his hand until a time, and times, and 
 the dividing of time," 1260 years, 42 months, or, as 
 Daniel calls it, " a time, and times, and the dividing of 
 time." 
 
 Notice here the points of identity. First of all the 
 empire, according to Daniel, was to be a great and com- 
 manding empire in its decem-regal, or, if you will permit 
 me to English the expression, in ten-kingdoms form. 
 These ten kingdoms were to be supplanted by some 
 power, called here a "little horn," that started up among 
 the rest. This little horn, according to Daniel, was to 
 have eyes like a man : iiriaKoiros, an overseer, the bishop 
 of Rome, the pontiff, the great ecclesiastical seer in 
 Christendom. This "little horn," in the next place, 
 just like " the wild beast" from the abyss and from the 
 sea, was to " make war with the saints, and to wear out 
 the saints of the Most High," and the duration of his 
 tyranny, it is stated, was to be for a time, times, and half 
 a time, or 1260 years, all of which are the characteristics 
 of " the eighth head," which " eighth head " is the same 
 as the " wild beast from the abyss," or " wild beast from 
 the sea," the great Antichrist, the Roman bishop that 
 heads the apostacy of Rome, of which we now speak. 
 
 The prophecy of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John 
 indicate a common origin and inspiration. It is thus 
 that the Old and New Testaments are not two religions, 
 but two witnesses to one great and eternal truth. As 
 the tips of the wings of the cherubim upon the mercy- 
 seat, in the Holy of Holies, touched each other while the 
 two angels looked down upon the propitiatory and glory 
 that burned between them, so these twain testaments, 
 while they speak in different formulas, yet speak of the 
 same Saviour, and concentrate all their illustrations upon 
 his personal glory, that solemn glory, made up of mercy 
 and truth and righteousness and peace, that God has 
 kindled, and neither time nor men nor evil spirits can put 
 out. The two testaments, like the twin lips of an oracle, 
 open to give utterance to one truth, to Christ as the
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 283 
 
 Lamb of God, the King of kings, and Lord of lords. 
 Their harmony demonstrates their divinity. And hence, 
 I am satisfied no man is so irrational as he that calls 
 himself a rationalist no man so superstitious as he 
 that calls himself a sceptic. It requires ten times the 
 amount of credulity to believe that this book is a lie that 
 it does to believe that it is God's truth. It requires but 
 an honest mind and an open heart to join in the conclu- 
 sion that this is the book of God : it requires a crooked 
 heart and a distorted mind to come to the conclusion, 
 after hearing the evidence, that it is a fable. 
 
 Suffer me, then, with this digression, which I would 
 place, if you will allow me, in a parenthesis, to proceed 
 to another illustration of this chapter which I have now 
 read : it is contained in 2 Thess.ii. 7 10. "For the mys- 
 tery of iniquity doth already work ; only he who letteth 
 will let until he be taken away. And then shall that 
 Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with 
 the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the 
 brightness of his coming : even him, whose coming is 
 after the working of Satan with all power and signs and 
 lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighte- 
 ousness in them that perish ; because they received not 
 the love of the truth that they might be saved." 
 
 I have another reason for referring you to this passage 
 and comparing it with the Apocalyptic delineation of 
 Antichrist, and thereby showing its identity. That rea- 
 son is the Puseyite treatment of it. What do you think 
 has been one great object of what is called the Tractarian 
 party during the last ten years ? It has been very directly 
 to explain away the description of Antichrist given in 2 
 Thess. ii., and the same description in Timothy, where it 
 says, " The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter 
 times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to 
 seducing spirits and doctrines of demons : " their great 
 effort has been to show that these passages are not de- 
 scriptions of the Roman Catholic apostacy, but are de- 
 scriptions of some terrible monster who is to be more than 
 six times the height and breadth of an ordinary man, and 
 is to be in the temple of Jerusalem, and to show himself
 
 284 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 to be the Antichrist there. They have a reason for this. 
 If I am right in my interpretation of all these passages, 
 Rome is not a sister Church and if names were authority 
 I might show you that all the Reformers, without excep- 
 tion, and some of the most distinguished Christian teach- 
 ers of the day, adhere to the exposition I have given ; 
 and reason and common sense seem to me to plead for 
 the justice and propriety of it. I admit there are some 
 a few a very few excellent divines, who are any 
 thing but Tractarians, and yet take, I am sorry to say, 
 the Tractarian interpretation. I believe, notwithstand- 
 ing, that one of the most successful efforts that have 
 been made during the last ten years to reintroduce 
 Popery into this country, has been the sweeping away, 
 or the pretended sweeping away of those brands that 
 mark it out in the oracles of God. I am thoroughly 
 satisfied that Tractarianism is the smoke from the bot- 
 tomless pit, and that the priests of Rome are like the 
 locusts sustained by it, and carried by it to blight all 
 that is green, and to blast all that is lovely. And Popery 
 does come in like a torrent. It finds channels ready for 
 its waters. It is already fixed by Pope Pius IX., that 
 there is to be an archbishop of Westminster a bishop 
 of York a bishop of Birmingham a bishop, I believe, 
 of Liverpool ; who are to lay aside the name of " Roman 
 Catholic," and assume to be the legitimate bishops with 
 the true apostolical succession, in the midst of this 
 country ; then I do not doubt that when it comes to this 
 height, and Romanism rules in the ascendant, men will 
 learn they were not fanatics who denounced it, nor alarm- 
 ists who warned you, but that we spoke forth the words 
 of soberness and truth. I solemnly believe, my dear 
 friends, that all but a judicial blindness rests on the 
 minds of many in the present day ; I believe that that 
 judicial blindness exhibits itself most strikingly in the ef- 
 forts made to explain away the brands upon the Apostacy. 
 One regrets to find that there should be some excellent 
 men who are not Tractarians, who deny the interpreta- 
 tion which I have put upon this passage, and say it does 
 not apply to Popery. Among others, there is Mr.
 
 THE AVILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 285 
 
 Burgh, a very pious and very able man, who has written 
 upon prophecy, but unhappily has taken the Tractarian 
 view ; and another, whom I have the honour of claiming 
 as an intimate friend, takes the same view, but has no 
 sympathy with Romanism in the least degree. The 
 description in the Thessalonians, I do submit, in its 
 main points, coincides with the thirteenth chapter that I 
 have now read. I will give a fuller exposition at a 
 future day. First, then, however, we read that the 
 mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now 
 letteth that is, the Roman emperor, " will let until he be 
 taken out of the way," or the seventh head, as I shall 
 show you, shall be removed, and the eighth shall take 
 its place. " There shall be a falling away," as it is in our 
 translation, but our translation is in this defective, it is in 
 the original " the Apostacy," that day shall not come 
 except there be " the Apostacy first, and that man of sin 
 be revealed, the son of perdition." According to the 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians, it is to emanate from Satan : 
 according to the Apocalypse, it is to be an aggression of 
 the dragon ; according to the Epistle to the Thessalonians, 
 it is to be " with signs and lying wonders ; " according 
 to the Apocalypse, he is to "deceive with miracles;" 
 according to the Epistle to the Thessalonians, it is to be 
 an ecclesiastical power, for it shall " sit in the temple of 
 God," literally cathedrize, sit as in a cathedral, in a 
 bishop's seat. According to Daniel, it is to be an ecclesi- 
 astical power, a little horn with eyes a seer ; and a wild 
 beast doing miracles, as described in the Apocalypse : 
 according to Thessalonians, to oppose Christ, and to con- 
 tinue till Christ should come. All these, therefore, 
 coincide perfectly, and are together the full description of 
 that great Apostacy the Apostacy the Church of Rome. 
 I now revert to the seventeenth chapter. The first 
 thing brought before us is the wild beast's head, or the 
 Pope : secondly, we have its body or its main constitu- 
 ency, ten kingdoms : next, we have the two-horned wild 
 beast, which I shall show you denotes the Romish priest- 
 hood : and lastly, we have the image of the wild beast, 
 which I shall show you denotes the representative councils, 
 synods, or assemblies of the Romish Church. You will
 
 286 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 notice now that this wild beast rose from the flood. 
 You will recollect last Lord's day evening I stated that 
 the flood was the Gothic Arian invasion that Satan 
 poured out from his mouth, in order to deluge the woman 
 or true Church of God, rising from the midst of the 
 Apostacy, and hastening to flee for shelter into that wil- 
 derness provided for her. It was from this flood that 
 Satan poured from his mouth, that this wild beast arose. 
 Thus Arianism ministered to Romanism. This power 
 was to have seven heads, and these seven heads we read 
 have a two-fold meaning. I do not invent a meaning, 
 St. John himself assigns it, therefore there can be no 
 doubt about it. These seven heads are, first of all, de- 
 clared to be, in chap, xvii., " The seven heads are seven 
 mountains," an expression which identifies the locality. 
 Consult any Latin writer, either of the classic or patris- 
 tic ages, and he will tell you that the seven-hilled city 
 is Rome. I could quote for you many proofs. 
 
 Sed quae de septcm totum circumspicis orbem 
 Montibus imperil Roma Deumque locus. Ovid. 
 
 Dis quibus, septem placuere colles. Horace. 
 
 Tertullian, in his Apology, speaks of the citizens of 
 Rome as the population that dwell upon seven hills. 
 There is, therefore, not the least doubt that the seven 
 hills are a geographical description of the seat of this 
 Apostacy, and in Rome accordingly, the answering lo- 
 cality, all the elements of the Popedom grew up. The 
 ashes of Peter and Paul were supposed to be buried at 
 Rome ; the Pope constituted himself guardian of their 
 dust, and ultimately the sole interpreter of their writings. 
 It is a remarkable fact, that when the Pope tried to 
 fulminate his bulls and launch his thunders at a distance 
 from Rome, as, for instance, from Avignon, Avhere the 
 Popes were driven for a little those thunders produced 
 no echo, his bulls had no effect, it seemed as though it 
 required that the Popes should reside at Rome, in order 
 to give force to their thunders, and effect to their 
 anathemas. 
 
 But the seven heads, we are told, denote, not only "seven 
 hills," but " seven kings," or forms of government ; and
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 287 
 
 the language here is very remarkable : " there are seven 
 kings, five are fallen, and one is," John is supposed to 
 be standing in Patmcs at the close of the first century 
 " five kings are fallen, and one is," i. e. while John was 
 a prisoner in Patmos " and the other is not yet come," 
 t. e. the seventh is future from John's day ; " when the 
 seventh shall come he shall only continue a little time : " 
 then that seventh, we are told in a subsequent part, shall 
 be wounded, and shall receive a deadly wound ; and in 
 order to compensate for the deadly wound inflicted on 
 the seventh, an eighth head shall come up ; that eighth 
 head is identified with the wild beast, or with the Pope, 
 the head of the Papal Apostacy. 
 
 Let us now notice the historic fulfilment of these Apoca- 
 lyptic descriptions. The point of view is Patmos. John 
 is the speaker : he says, there were seven kings, five are 
 fallen, and a sixth is, A. D. 97, and a seventh is yet to 
 come : this seventh shall be wounded, and an eighth 
 shall arise, which is identified with the little horn, or 
 wild beast from the sea, or head of the Apostacy. I open 
 the pages of history, and I find that there had been five 
 different forms of government, all of which had passed 
 away prior to John's day, or the close of the first cen- 
 tury. Livy and Tacitus enumerate, 1st, kings ; 2nd, 
 consuls ; 3rd, decemvirs ; 4th, dictators ; 5th, military 
 tribunes : these five dynasties, or forms of government, 
 had successively ruled the Roman empire, and had passed 
 away. Then John says, " one is." What one was that ? 
 We answer, the emperors in their primitive or early 
 official character, having on their heads, as I showed you 
 in a previous lecture, not the diadem, or badge of impe- 
 rial sovereignty, but the Stephanos, or badge of the ge- 
 neral of the armies. 
 
 We have, then,' here the historic fulfilment of the five 
 that had passed away, and of the one that is, which is 
 the sixth : but who then was the seventh ? This was the 
 great difficulty which it was reserved to the Rev. Mr. 
 Elliot to explain : because what commentators said, and 
 what would strike a mere superficial reader of history, 
 Avas that the emperors not only were when John wrote, 
 but they continued till the days of Constantine, and the
 
 288 APOCALYPTIC SKETCIIES. 
 
 establishment of the eighth head, to make room for whom 
 they had passed away : no interpreters had ever been 
 able to explain it, till, guided, I believe, by the Spirit of 
 God, Mr. Elliot, a scholar, a Christian, a divine, dis- 
 covered what I think to be the clear and unequivocal 
 fulfilment in history of the Apocalyptic reference to the 
 seventh king of the Apocalypse. The name of emperors, 
 I allow, continued till the very moment when the eighth 
 head, or the Pope, took the supremacy ; but the office was 
 utterly changed, for just before the passing away of the 
 imperial power and the coming upon the stage of the 
 supremacy of the ecclesiastical or Papal power, the laurel 
 crown, which was the characteristic decoration of the em- 
 perors, as mere leaders or generals, was laid aside ; and 
 in its place was worn the Asiatic diadem, the sign, and 
 under it the substance of absolute power, first, by Dio- 
 clesian, and afterwards by all the Roman emperors. You 
 will recollect, in explaining the previous symbol of the 
 seal, how I told you that the ore^dj'oc, or the laurel crown, 
 was the crown that Augustus wore, and all the emperors 
 prior to the third century ; and that the ictc>;/ja, or an 
 Asiatic diadem, was adopted in the third century, and 
 subsequently worn. 
 
 The name emperor continued, but a new officer really 
 came upon the stage the name of the sixth survived, 
 but in fact the seventh had come into office in the change 
 of the aTifyavoQ, or laurel crown, into the 2mc;/;jua, that is, 
 the change from being simply emperor, or general of the 
 Roman armies, to be the rvpavvos, or tyrant, or sove- 
 reign, or absolute ruler of the Roman empire : and there 
 was as marked a difference between the laurelled-emperor 
 of the first and second centuries, and the diademed- 
 sovereign of the third, as there is between the President 
 of the United States and the Autocrat of all the Russias. 
 The name emperor was retained, but the government 
 became an absolute despotism. 
 
 Is there any satisfactory historical evidence that tliis 
 was regarded as a change of government ? I must appeal 
 to him who was the cleverest and most sarcastic infidel 
 historian, but the most brilliant commentator, not by choice 
 but undesignedly, on Apocalyptic prophecy : Gibbon says,
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 289 
 
 " Dioclesian assumed the diadem and introduced a new 
 ceremonial : this WAS A NEW FORM OF GOVERNMENT ; " 
 it was, in short, the seventh head. " Dioclesian," says 
 Gibbon, " may be called the founder of a NEW EMPIRE." 
 Thus, you observe, the translation from the aretyavog to 
 the Stacker, from the laurel crown of the general who 
 commanded the Roman army, to the diadem of the 
 sovereign, who was the %tairoTr}G or (3a<n\eve in the 
 Greek, or the dominus in the Latin, provinces of the 
 empire, was so remarkable a change, that the histo- 
 rian says it was the commencement of a new dynasty ; 
 and thus we find the true solution of what so long puz- 
 zled commentators, in actual historical facts, of five 
 heads that had passed away, a sixth that continued in 
 the days of John, and of the seventh that was to last till 
 he should be wounded to death, and also pass away to 
 make room for the " wild beast from the abyss," or eighth 
 head, or head of the Papal Apostacy. 
 
 The next declaration in this chapter is that the 
 seventh head should be wounded to death chap. xiii. 3 
 " And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to 
 death ; and his deadly wound was healed, and all the 
 world wondered after the beast ;" and then, in chap, 
 xvii., it is said, " five are fallen and one is, and the other 
 is not yet come, and when he cometh he must continue 
 a short space :" now, of course he is come now : and 
 then he adds, " And the beast that was and is not, even 
 he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into per- 
 dition ; " i. e. this wild beast or head is to succeed the 
 seventh so quickly, and be grafted, as it were, upon the 
 neck of the beast so closely and so unexpectedly, as- to 
 be of the seventh, and yet to be the eighth. 
 
 Let us endeavour to ascertain if there is any historical 
 evidence that the seventh head, whom we have ascer- 
 tained to be the. diademed sovereign of the Roman em- 
 pire, or " he who lets," according to St. Paul, was 
 wounded to death in order to make way, as if mortally 
 wounded, for the eighth. You recollect that the twelfth 
 chapter, on which I have commented, pointed to a season 
 of persecution by the heathen power ; and you may re- 
 collect that that persecution was inflicted, by the heathens
 
 290 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 on the Christians. Gibbon states that four great battles 
 were fought in the days of Constantine, that is, under the 
 diademed emperor ; on which he makes the remark, " the 
 sword of the Christian struck down the last Pagan head 
 of the Roman empire." And yet, as he states, though 
 " mortally wounded" the very language of the Apoca- 
 lypse he lived. The Apocalypse intimates that the 
 seventh, though mortally wounded, continued a linger- 
 ing, dying existence. And now Gibbon says, the hea- 
 thens after the heathen had been struck down and, in 
 the language of Gibbon, or in the words of the Apoca- 
 lypse, he had received a deadly wound, he lived a little 
 longer or in the words of Gibbon, who is here the com- 
 mentator of the Apocalypse " the heathens cherished a 
 secret hope that some auspicious revolution would yet 
 restore to them all that they had lost ;" till at last, as 
 Gibbon goes on to say, " the violent and repeated strokes 
 of the Christians gradually destroyed the Pagan." Then, 
 he adds, that in a full meeting of the senate, the em- 
 peror Constantine proposed to decide which was true by 
 votes. I am not saying that this was a Christian mode 
 of deciding what is truth and what is error, I am merely 
 quoting an historical fact. But if I may venture to give 
 an opinion, I would not desire you should take your creed 
 from minister, prince, or emperor. No man has a right to 
 dictate to you or me my belief: and while I would obey, 
 and cheerfully obey, the powers that be, yet when it 
 comes to the question whether the powers that be shall 
 decide for me what creed I shall believe, then I must 
 suffer rather than yield. I would rather be a martyr 
 amid the smiles of truth, than be a prime minister amid 
 the applause of the prince, and the plaudits of the multi- 
 tude over the sacrifice of truth Gibbon, I repeat, states 
 that in a full meeting of the senate, the emperor proposed 
 for decision by vote, whether the worship of Jupiter or 
 the worship of Christ should be the religion of Rome. 
 Jupiter was condemned by a very large majority. In 
 this instance the majority was right : whether the mo- 
 tives which actuated them, and the grounds on which 
 they proceeded, were right, is a different question ; but 
 in their decision they were undoubtedly in the right.
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 291 
 
 And then, says G ibbon as if he had read the Apocalypse, 
 and I do not believe he ever did read it ; and as if he 
 believed the Apocalypse, and he believed not a syllable 
 of the New Testament in almost the very language 
 in which we read, that the seventh king received a 
 deadly wound, or was mortally wounded, " THEODO- 
 
 SIUS INFLICTED A DEADLY AVOTJND ON THE SUPERSTITIONS 
 
 OF THE PAGANS." Thus we have the seventh head, or 
 the Pagan empire, swept away, and thereby leaving 
 room for the eighth to come. It has been said in physics, 
 nature abhors a vacuum ; that is, you cannot make and 
 maintain a vacuum ; some crevice will be left, the small- 
 est aperture will be sufficient for the atmosphere to rush 
 in. What is true physically is true morally. There 
 cannot be a moral vacuum. No man's heart can ever 
 be empty. You think when you have closed your heart 
 against the entrance of the gospel, you have left it 
 empty, swept, and garnished. My dear friends, it is 
 only opened for seven demons to rush in and reign and 
 revel there : man's heart can never be empty ; it must 
 have God to fill it with his glory, or it will have an idol 
 to fill it with superstition. If the seventh head dis- 
 appears, another will occupy its place. A nation must 
 have a religion. 
 
 The seventh head was wounded to death, but Satan 
 had found a compensation for his loss in the eighth that 
 followed : and, I must add, this one point opens to me a 
 range of thought the most important, if I dare enter upon 
 it. Satan felt that when Paganism was smitten down 
 never to rise again, that he had lost one great servant 
 and supporter upon earth. I believe that if ever Mil- 
 ton's picture became fact, that Satan and the fallen 
 angels in hell held conclave, or a synod, or a general 
 council, it was on this occasion : and that as the result 
 of their deliberations they pronounced the funeral ora- 
 tion of Paganism I would have said with tears, if fallen 
 spirits could weep ; but it is their agony that they have 
 the intensest sorrow, but no channel for tears ; but 
 surely if ever they felt pain, it was when Paganism, the 
 servant of Satan, was dethroned : but this sorrow was 
 turned into joy, for if ever hell was lighted up with in- 
 v 2
 
 292 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 fernal joy, it was when Satan hit upon his masterpiece, 
 the great Roman Apostacy. In other words, the wound- 
 ing of the seventh head signifies the overthrow of 
 Paganism, and the eighth, its successor, describes Satan's 
 compensatory provision, the supremacy and power of 
 the great Roman Antichrist. This was a master-stroke, 
 a compensation for loss ; a defeat turned into victory, 
 for Satan has done ten times more mischief by means of 
 the instrumentality of a Hildebrand, or an Alexander 
 VI., than ever he did by means of a Nero or a Tiberius. 
 The vacancy was left by the destruction of the Pagan 
 head, and the eighth or Papal was prepared to fill it : 
 and again I appeal for evidence to what is so clearly ex- 
 planatory of the Apocalypse, history, and to the chiefest 
 histoi'ian, Gibbon. Now what does he say when record- 
 ing the facts of this very period, this very portion of the 
 history of the world ? He says, " Like Thebes, or 
 Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome must have 
 been erased from the earth, if the city had not been 
 actuated by a vital principle which restored her to 
 honour and dominion." This vital principle he explains 
 to be a tradition that two Jewish teachers, a tent-maker 
 and a fisherman, had been executed at Rome, in the 
 circus of Nero that after frve hundred years their ge- 
 nuine or fictitious relics were adored as the Palladium of 
 Rome and that about this time the bishopric of Rome was 
 filled by one of living energy, the first of the Gregories. 
 
 And two writers, describing the time when the eighth 
 head thus became Satan's compensation for the wounding 
 and death of the seventh head, or Paganism that passed 
 away, neither of them of very great celebrity, thus write : 
 
 Augustine Steuchus. " The empire having been over- 
 thrown, unless God had raised up the Pontificate, Rome 
 would have become uninhabitable." 
 
 Blondus writes : " The princes of the world now 
 adore and worship as perpetual dictators the successors, 
 not of Caesar, but of the fisherman Peter, that is, the 
 supreme Pontiff, the substitute of the aforementioned 
 emperor." 
 
 I now proceed to give the explanation of another 
 passage. There are ten horns described by the Apoca-
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 293 
 
 lyptic writer to be ten kingdoms. These ten kings, with 
 their kingdoms, are stated to have been in communion 
 with the beast ; " to give their strength unto the beast ;" 
 that is, that they were to be part and parcel of the body 
 of the beast. Let us endeavour to ascertain if there is 
 any truth in this by an appeal to history. I refer to A. D. 
 532, and I find the following enumerated, not by Mr. 
 Elliot, or any commentator on the Apocalypse, but by 
 every historian of the period, viz. the Anglo-Saxons ; 
 the Franks of Central France ; the Ullman Franks of 
 Eastern France ; the Burgundic Franks of South-east- 
 ern France ; the Visigoths ; the Suevi ; the Vandals ; 
 the Ostrogoths in Italy ; the Bavarians ; the Lombards ; 
 making in all ten kingdoms, now known by more modern 
 names, but constituting the ten main kingdoms of the 
 Christian world. These ten kingdoms, I say, have been 
 thus enumerated by various authorities, and admitted by 
 almost every Romish, Protestant, or Infidel historian 
 since ; and the ten horns therefore arising from the eighth 
 head are, in simple language, the ten kingdoms that rose 
 up under the superintendence and patronage of the Roman 
 Pontiff; and thus Muller, the celebrated German histo- 
 rian, gives a confirmation of this very symbol or hiero- 
 glyph of the Apocalypse, when he remarks, " WITH THE 
 
 EXCEPTION OP THE PAPACY THESE TEN KINGDOMS HAD 
 
 NO OTHER POINT OF UNION." They shall give their 
 strength to the beast, and shall be part and parcel of the 
 great Apostacy. 
 
 And now I must attempt to describe the development 
 of this power. First, then, the great policy of Satan was 
 to compensate himself for the defection of the seventh 
 head, or the ruin of Paganism. To do this he hit upon 
 the scheme of Romanism ; a scheme that assumes the 
 name, but renders null every precept of the gospel, and 
 has all the virus without the honesty of that infidelity or 
 Paganism which had passed away which was Caesar's 
 vile brass stamped with Caesar's superscription ; whereas 
 Popery, or the religion of the eighth head, is Caesar's 
 vile brass still, but wickedly stamped with the image and 
 superscription of the Son of God. The one was Satan 
 honest, and acting as an honest devil. The latter is
 
 294 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Satan acting as an angel of light. The one denied all 
 truth denounced all hope ; the other professes to admit 
 all truth, whilst it really overwhelms all truth by the 
 sanction and the admission of error. Open, my dear 
 friends, what I have often explained, the Roman Catho- 
 lic Creed ; a mere reference to it will show you at once 
 what Popery is. It first admits twelve articles called 
 the Nicene Creed, drawn up by the Council of Nice in 
 325 ; it is contained in the liturgy of the Church of 
 England, and in Scotland, I believe, we learn the found- 
 ation of it, on which it was constructed, the Apostle's 
 Creed, which is in our Catechism, and also in the West- 
 minster Confession of Faith. But to these twelve articles, 
 you observe, they add twelve other articles. The second 
 of the t\velve novel articles is as follows : " I also admit 
 the sacred Scriptures in the sense in which holy mother 
 Church has held and does hold, to whom it belongs to 
 judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy 
 Scriptures ; nor will I ever take or interpret them other- 
 wise than according to the unanimous consent of the 
 Fathers." Such is the fourteenth article of the Roman 
 Catholic Creed. The mystery of godliness is that God 
 should come doAvn to the limits of a man ; the mystery 
 of iniquity, that a man should dare to usurp and assume 
 the attributes of God. And here is the explanation of 
 the mystery. There is first the admission of every Chris- 
 tian truth ; then, corresponding to it, the application of 
 an antichristian lie. The temptations of Popery are like 
 the temptation of Eve by Satan. He did not say, " God 
 hath not said," he insinuated a doubt. " Can it be so ? 
 surely you are mistaken, that God hath said you shall 
 die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so beautiful. It is im- 
 possible. The laws of nature and physical science tell 
 you that my interpretation is correct ; you shall not die. 
 I can tell you, by my own experience as an angel, that 
 ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Eve first 
 became accustomed to have the word of God explained 
 away, and then she learned to disbelieve it, and lastly 
 felt it taken from beneath her altogether, till she learned 
 what good was by its evanescence, and what evil was by 
 feeling its corrosive poison thrill through all her moral
 
 THE WILD BEAST KISING FROM THE SEA. 295 
 
 economy. So Satan seduced the visible Church. It was 
 as a commentator on Scripture, not as an avowed oppo- 
 nent of it, that he introduces the Apostacy, and just whilst 
 the seventh head was still in existence whilst the 
 Church was in its Puseyistic state, prior to its full de- 
 velopment in the Popish state for Puseyism is but 
 Popery in miniature ; Popery is but Puseyism at full 
 length Satan first quoted the text, "Thou art Peter, 
 and upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates 
 of hell shall not prevail against it ;" and upon the per- 
 version of that text he laid the foundation of the super- 
 structure of the Roman Catholic Apostacy. I explained 
 its meaning in my last lecture, but I have just one thought 
 more upon it that struck me in correcting the report of 
 the last lecture : Trerpoc, I told you, means a little stone 
 a fragment struck out from the rock. " And upon 
 this Trerpa I will build my Church :" not on Trerpoe, mas- 
 culine, meaning a little stone, but on Trerpa, feminine, 
 meaning the solid rock. Now hear its obviously true 
 exposition. Christ presents himself to us as a builder, 
 who is going to build a church a composition of such 
 stones as Peter was ; for what is the Church ? a fabric, 
 a building, erected of Trerpoi, living stones, all based on 
 the great stone, or solid Rock of Ages ; a number of elect 
 stones, chosen from the quarries of the earth, and built 
 upon the Rock of Ages the same body that is called the 
 woman in the wilderness the two witnesses the Church 
 of the living God. This is that against which the gates 
 of hell shall not prevail. Satan's grand policy lay in con- 
 founding the true Church with the visible Church the 
 truly regenerate with the baptized the man-baptized 
 with the God-baptized those who are Christians in heart 
 with those who are Christians in name only : and in this 
 intermingling of heaven and earth, he raised the great 
 antichristian Apostacy. Now there are two temples, one 
 built upon Christ, composed of living Trerpot living stones 
 taken from nature's quarry; selected, and cut, and 
 squared by God himself cemented by living love until 
 they grow up into a glorious fabric, immovable and im- 
 mortal ; but there rises along with it parallel to it more 
 impressive to the eyes of men more beautiful before
 
 296 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 princes more attractive to the senses more fascinating 
 to the mere carnal beholders so charming to the mere 
 man of taste, that the celebrated architect, Mr. Pugin, 
 became a Roman Catholic, not by Popish reasons, but by 
 the magic of Popish building so fascinating in its exte- 
 rior, that all men who are guided by their senses only 
 are disposed to join it the fabric of the Romish Apostacy. 
 You may yet have to make your choice : the time may 
 come again when gold will lie upon the altars, and rich 
 gifts upon the shrines of the Popish Church, and the de- 
 sert, the den, the cave, the solitary places of the earth, 
 will be the portion of God's people. Some one made the 
 sarcastic remark, that in every one hundred persons, you 
 may calculate on making converts of ninety-nine, if you 
 can only captivate their five senses. Satan believes so. 
 He made Popery on this principle. Popery has splendid 
 paintings for the eye gorgeous music for the ear in- 
 cense for the smell on that side licence, on the other, 
 absolution. Rome captivates the senses, and she counts 
 on all the rest. I have seen Popery in its splendour 
 Tractarianism is but a shabby imitation of it with no 
 contiguous Protestantism. I have said, when I listened 
 to the pealing of its organs when I beheld the beauty of 
 its paintings, the chef-cFceuvres, the master-pieces of the 
 world, affixed to its walls when I beheld the sunbeams 
 shedding their light through the beautiful windows, re- 
 flected from the golden robes of twenty or thirty intoning, 
 crossing, and genuflecting priests If I were not a Chris- 
 tian I would be a Roman Catholic : but I am a Christian 
 by grace ; and, by grace, I never can become a Roman 
 Catholic. My dear friends, those whose names are written 
 in the Lamb's book of life, never can become Roman 
 Catholics. Popery makes no converts of regenerated 
 hearts. It does not attempt to do so. Such are beyond 
 her reach, and she knows it. Did you never read that 
 when armies are marching to the battle, there is always 
 seen a dark speck approaching from the distant point of 
 the horizon, hovering with outspread pinions over the 
 field, keeping without the range of gunshot, yet following 
 the scent of blood. Have you not read, or perhaps seen, 
 that this foul vulture, the instant it sees a soldier fall,
 
 THE WILD BEAST RISING FROM THE SEA. 297 
 
 dashes upon him like a thunderbolt from the sky, and 
 feeds upon his vitals, and gorges itself with his blood. It 
 attempts not to touch the living Avarrior, it seeks the 
 slain. That vulture is the type of Romanism she leaves 
 the man whose heart has been quickened with the elec- 
 tric spark of grace divine who has been made alive by 
 the Spirit of God ; she will neither approach nor touch 
 him ; but the dead, they who have the name without the 
 reality of religion believers in Christ by profession, but 
 not in principle those who have been baptized by 
 man, but not baptized by God she seizes on as her 
 quarry, and carries away captive. I say, when I think 
 of the multitude of unbelievers, and the fewness of true 
 Christians, I do not wonder that Rome makes so many 
 converts I wonder that she does not make many more. 
 If I saw the whole Church of Christ composed of living 
 believers, we could sit upon our island rocks and hurl 
 defiance, in the name of God, to all the swarms of priests 
 that are threatening us ; but when I see so many who are 
 mere professors and if there be any inconsistency in 
 earth or hell, it is the inconsistency of merely professing 
 Christians I fear for our country. 
 
 Only three days ago, one of the Secretaries of the 
 London Missionary Society came to me, and said that 
 the Secretaries of the different Missionary Societies 
 had been consulting together, on the painful fact that 
 wherever the missionaries of Christ endeavour to spread 
 the gospel, they are assailed by the emissaries of Rome 
 endeavouring to circulate the errors of Antichrist. I 
 have promised to the Rev. Mr. Freeman to prepare a 
 book or explanation of texts misinterpreted by the priests, 
 and misapplied by them, in order that it may be put into 
 the hands of missionaries of all denominations. My dear 
 friends, the conflict between truth and error seems to 
 come on quickly, their respective forces are getting ready; 
 those only will be more than conquerors who have washed 
 their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and to whom Chris- 
 tianity is more than a letter to whom it is life and light, 
 and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
 
 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 
 
 " And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blas- 
 pheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in 
 
 heaven. 
 " And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to 
 
 overcome them : and power was given him over all kindreds, 
 
 and tongues, and nations. 
 " 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. 
 " If any man have an ear, let him hear. 
 " He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity : he that 
 
 killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is 
 
 the patience and the faith of the saints. 
 " And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth ; and he 
 
 had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 
 " And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and 
 
 causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the 
 
 first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 
 " And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down 
 
 from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 
 " And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of 
 
 those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the 
 
 beast ; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should 
 
 make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, 
 
 and did live. 
 " And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that 
 
 the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many 
 
 as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 
 " And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and 
 
 bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads : 
 " And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, 
 
 or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 
 " Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 299 
 
 number of the beast : for it is the number of a man ; and his 
 number is Six hundred threescore and six." REV. xiii. 6 18. 
 
 THOSE who were present last Sunday evening will re- 
 collect how completely I identified the eighth head that 
 was to arise on the destruction of the seventh, with the 
 little horn of Daniel, or with the Antichrist spoken of 
 in 2 Thess. ii., and with the wild beast to arise from the 
 abyss in the seventeenth chapter of this book. I showed 
 you by clear historical facts that the eighth head was an 
 ecclesiastical power that followed on the destruction of the 
 seventh, and that that ecclesiastical power reigns at Rome 
 to this day. I proved its identity with the Popes of 
 Rome, first by showing that the seven hills is the very 
 description employed by classic writers to describe Rome. 
 I showed you too that the seven heads denote, as it is ex- 
 plained in chap, xvii., seven forms of political govern- 
 ment, five in existence before John's day, the sixth, or 
 the imperial, in his day, the seventh, or the change from 
 the arttyavoQ of the general of the Roman armies to the 
 ^ia^r)/j.a, the symbol of the Asiatic sovereigns, in the 
 days of Dioclesian, and immediately after the destruc- 
 tion of this the seventh head, the rise and power of the 
 eighth, in the Pope of Rome and his successors. I was 
 obliged to defer to this evening the proofs and charac- 
 teristics of the eighth head, as these are declared in the 
 sequel of the thirteenth chapter ; and also the explana- 
 tion of the second wild beast, that had horns like a lamb 
 and spake as a dragon ; and next, of the image of the 
 beast ; and lastly, the number of his name, 666, each of 
 which I will therefore attempt to describe. 
 
 Now, to illustrate the great position which I assumed 
 last Sunday evening, I shall have simply to make ex- 
 tracts, and these extracts, if they have any value, have 
 this at least, that they are from authentic and original 
 sources. You may depend on the extracts that I make, 
 and the references that I give, as perfectly authentic. 
 
 I will first trace the initial history of the eighth head 
 in the Popes of Rome, and show from what small her 
 ginnings their tremendous power originally sprung. 
 First, Peter was gratuitously assumed to be the prince 
 of the Apostles. For this assumption there was no
 
 300 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 evidence in authentic history or in Scripture. It was 
 merely the conclusion of those that wished it to be true. 
 Next, Rome assumed to be the place of the martyrdom 
 and sepulchre of the ashes of Peter and of Paul ; al- 
 though there is no evidence in Scripture, and not very 
 much in ecclesiastical history, that Peter ever was at 
 Rome at all. Most certain it is, that if ever he was 
 there, there is no evidence whatever that he was con- 
 stituted the bishop of that see or prince of the Apostles, 
 or if he was so constituted, that he bequeathed his pre- 
 rogatives and powers to the Popes that should follow. 
 In the next place, the bishop of Rome, being the prelate 
 of the metropolitan see, a see peculiarly central, and a 
 locality beyond all others celebrated in the history of 
 the past, was naturally deferred to and respected by the 
 rest of the ministers and bishops of Christendom. By 
 and by it came to be a custom that when disputes 
 occurred between the bishops or ministers of other 
 dioceses, the bishop of Rome, as being the most promin- 
 ent, the most powerful, and owing to these facts not 
 the least learned, was selected to be umpire, and to de- 
 cide their controversies ; and out of these elements and 
 on this basis there shot up that tremendous despotism 
 which has lorded it over the consciences of men, and be- 
 stridden the kingdoms and empires of the earth. 
 
 By and by bolder claims were put forth, and as early 
 as at the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, the legate of 
 Celestine, the then existing Pope, made the statement, "a 
 thing it is undoubted that the apostle Peter received the 
 keys and the power of binding and loosing ; and Peter still 
 lives and exercises power in his successors even at this day." 
 About twenty years after this, Pope Leo said, "as being 
 the see of the blessed Peter, the Pope is made the head 
 of the world." I need not explain to you what a see is. 
 It is derived from the word sedes, a seat, a pulpit, the 
 place where the minister or the presiding minister sat. 
 And I may also here state and I am aware you will 
 not say it arises from prejudice, but from facts I be- 
 lieve the very earliest form of ecclesiastical politics was 
 that of a presiding minister with two or three ministers 
 under him ; but then the extent of his diocese was a con-
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 301 
 
 gregation within four walls. For instance we read that 
 Cyprian was bishop of Carthage ; but how many pres- 
 byters had he, do you think ? When you hear the word 
 bishop, you think of the bishop of London, or the bishop 
 of Winchester you think of one who is made a lord by 
 the laws of the realm who exercises great power and 
 lives in great splendour : but the bishops of the Primitive 
 Church were simply the presiding ministers, who each 
 exercised control over two or three ministers under 
 him, and whose only diocese was probably about forty 
 feet square ; and the only income of the bishops was de- 
 rived, not from the pew-rents, for I think they were not 
 then known, but from the gratuitous contributions of 
 the people that met together ; and accordingly Cyprian, 
 bishop of Carthage, primitive in this respect, though not 
 so in others, had just five presbyters under him, and 
 these presbyters he sent forth to make converts to the 
 gospel through the length and breadth of Africa. 
 
 Then Hilary, we read, the successor of Leo, accepted 
 the title, in the fifth century, of successor of Peter, to 
 whom the keys of the kingdom belong. Pope Gelasius 
 said, " There are two authorities by which the world is 
 governed, the pontifical, and the royal, and in divine 
 things it becomes kings to bow the neck to priests, espe- 
 cially to the head of priests, whom Christ's own voice 
 has set over the universal Church." And Pope Sym- 
 machus, when presiding at a Roman Council, accepted 
 the defence set up for him by Ennodius, " that the Pope 
 was judge in the place of God, and could himself be 
 judged of no man." And finally we read, that Justinian 
 in his Code, and seventy years afterwards, Phocas, the 
 emperor, in his decree, constituted the Pope the great 
 head and ruler of the Church universal, and commanded 
 all men to obey his behests, or to be punished with im- 
 prisonments, confiscation of goods, exile, and death, in 
 case of disobedience or dissent. 
 
 Such, then, is the rise of the Papal power. Now you 
 will recollect, I identified the wild beast from the abyss 
 with the little horn of Daniel ; that little horn having 
 eyes as a seer, being literally a seer ; and the translation
 
 302 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of the Greek word eiriam-n-oc, which we have Saxonized 
 into bishop, is an over seer : not an overlooker, as the 
 best of bishops sometimes are ; but an overseer, as 
 bishops ought to be, superintending and taking care of 
 the duties that devolve upon them. I showed you this 
 little horn was the symbol and prophetic type of the 
 Pope. I read from the 7th of Daniel the account of the 
 ten horns, or the ten kingdoms, which I identified and 
 named : of whom three were to fall before the little 
 horn : for it is written, " And of the ten horns which 
 were in his head, and of the other which came up" i. e. 
 the little horn " and before whom three fell." In 
 like manner we find in the Book of Revelation, the ten 
 horns were ten kingdoms subject to the Pope, and that 
 three of those kingdoms were subverted in order to 
 make way for the development and expansion of the 
 Papal power. I open the pages of Gibbon, or of any 
 other faithful and authentic historian, and find that three 
 great kingdoms, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, and the 
 Lombards, were found to be extremely troublesome 
 neighbours to the Pope, interfering with his power, 
 checking his pretensions, and otherwise disturbing the 
 privileges he believed to belong to his see ; and these 
 three were rooted up and destroyed : and thus there is 
 seen to be complete identity between the prophecy of 
 Daniel, the Apocalypse of John, and the records of 
 history. 
 
 We have before us the full and gradual development 
 of that terrible power; and we have, in that gradual 
 development, a striking evidence of Avhat Mr. Newman 
 assumed for all the doctrines of the Popedom, namely, 
 the power, the inherent power of a gradual progressive 
 expansion. Mr. Newman says that the Apostles 
 planted the seeds of truth, and nothing more ; that it 
 was left to the Church to foster and develop them ; he 
 contends that transubstantiation is the legitimate de- 
 velopment of the Lord's supper, and that the Pope of 
 Rome, lording it over the kings of the earth, is the pro- 
 per divine development of the ancient fisherman Peter. 
 Mr. Newman's idea is this : that the acorn of truth is
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 303 
 
 planted in the soil, where it gradually germinates and 
 shoots up, until at last, in the nineteenth century, it ap- 
 pears in the form of the outspreading and gigantic oak. 
 But when we come to analyze the proofs of his theory, and 
 the illustration that he gives of it, we find that he has 
 mistaken his illustration ; and that the true symbol is not 
 the acorn expanding into the oak, but the snow-ball 
 starting from the summit of the loftiest snow-clad Alp, 
 rolling down the mountain side, attaching to itself snow, 
 ice, straw, earth, stones, stubble, until it lies at the bot- 
 tom of the hill, a tremendous aggregate of all that is 
 corrupt in nature, and heterogeneous in composition. 
 
 I proceed, in the next place, after thus touching upon 
 the gradual development of the Papacy, to show proofs 
 and these are spread over every page of the history of 
 the past of one distinctive and branding character here 
 ascribed to the Pope, that he " opened his mouth in 
 blasphemies against God, and blasphemed his name," 
 and that there was given unto him a mouth speak- 
 ing great things and blasphemies." I need scarcely 
 tell you that this is the common character that pervades 
 all the portraits. In Daniel, the predicted apostate 
 speaks great things. In Paul's Epistle to the Thessalo- 
 nians, " he exalts himself above all that is called God." 
 In this chapter he is represented as " speaking blas- 
 phemies." In chap. xvii. the very same character is 
 applied to him. We may therefore assume, that if the 
 Pope can be proved to speak blasphemy, not once, nor 
 twice, but statedly, and inseparably from his very office, 
 he is, in this respect alone, the identical wild beast from 
 the sea described in chap. xiii. of the Book of Revela- 
 tion. Let us see, then, if there is evidence of this. 
 
 First, I will give an extract from the official Direc- 
 tory for the election of the Pope, the prescriptions of 
 which are to be followed whenever a new Pope is chosen. 
 In that Directory, which is embodied in the Notitia 
 Romana that is, the standing orders of the Court of 
 Rome, edited by a Jesuit, and published in 1683 the 
 following description is given : " After the Pope's 
 election and proclamation, the Pope, attired in his pon-
 
 304 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 tifical dress, is borne in the pontifical chair to the church 
 of St. Peter, and is there placed upon the high altar, 
 where he is saluted, for the third time, by the cardinals 
 kissing his hand and foot and mouth, and, in the mean 
 time, the Te Deum is sung ' We praise thee, O God ! 
 we acknowledge thee to be the Lord,' and when the 
 adoration by them is over, the Pontiff then descends 
 from the altar." Now, recollect what the altar is with 
 the Roman Catholic. It is that sacred spot in the tem- 
 ple of God on which the wafer, or the consecrated host 
 his God lies, as soon as the priest pronounces the 
 words, "Hoc enim est corpus meum." The Roman 
 Catholic believes that what was flour and water to all 
 the senses, a moment before, by being placed on the 
 altar, and breathed on by the priest, is turned into the 
 soul and divinity, the literal flesh and the literal blood of 
 the Son of the living God. And it is upon this altar, on 
 which the Roman Catholic priest pretends to offer Christ 
 as a propitiation for the sins of the living and the dead, 
 that the Pope is placed. On that spot, the most sacred 
 in the eye of a Romanist, on the spot to which the Ro- 
 man Catholic turns to adore and worship his God, the 
 Pope is throned and " adored " by the cardinals, and the 
 Te Deum is the incense that is raised in his presence. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, " This is an old, and, it may 
 be, an obsolete book." No doctrine is obsolete in the 
 Church of Rome. Her doctrines are stereotyped she 
 boasts that she is unchanged and unchangeable, and every 
 one cannot but feel, that if a doctrine was infallibly or- 
 thodox in the sixteenth century, it cannot be infallibly 
 heterodox in the nineteenth. Truth must be still true, 
 in all the centuries of time, in all latitudes and longitudes 
 of the earth, and under all circumstances. But lest there 
 should be the least misapprehension in this matter, I will 
 prove that these blasphemies are neither obsolete nor re- 
 pudiated. I will refer to so recent a fact as the election 
 of the present "liberal" Pope, who, we are told by his 
 friends, is resolved there shall be no tyranny in his 
 domains, no despotism beneath his crosier. I open a news- 
 paper published in France under the auspices of the
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 305 
 
 Jesuits, called Z' Univers, and in this paper I read the 
 following account of the consecration of the present 
 Pope, Pius IX. On the 17th June, 1840, about half- 
 past five, his Holiness, Pius IX., appeared at St. Peter's, 
 to receive the adoration of the cardinals. Having en- 
 tered the Sistine chapel, the Pope prays : he then seats 
 himself upon the altar, where he receives the adoration" 
 not the homage, mind you, but the adoration " of 
 the cardinals, who also kissed his hands and his feet ; his 
 Holiness was then raised on the sedia, preceded by the 
 cross, and the choristers of the Papal chapel chaunt, 
 ' Behold the great high priest,' is carried to the basilique 
 or church of St. Peter, then placed upon the middle of 
 the high altar of St. Peter, he there received the third 
 adoration of the cardinals. The Cardinal Dorien, having 
 first made his obedience, intones the Te Deum, which 
 the choristers continue till the Pope has received the 
 adoration of all the sacred college, then the cardinal in- 
 tones, ' Our Father who art in heaven.'" I may just 
 notice, all the bishops, clergy, cardinals, and priests kiss 
 the Pope's hand, but the greatest sovereign upon the 
 earth Queen Victoria, if she were to be so misguided as 
 to offer such homage, which I am sure, by the grace of 
 God, she never will be, would not be allowed to kiss the 
 hands of the Pope, but must kneel down and kiss his 
 feet. The highest layman in the world down to the 
 lowest, in order to show the superiority of the Pontiff to 
 all civil power, must kiss the Pontiffs feet, and not, as the 
 clergy do, his hands. I have spoken of the power of the 
 Pope. Let me show that it is real, and requires room 
 only to develop its pretensions. Two years ago, there 
 were instituted in Ireland certain colleges for the educa- 
 tion of the young. It was supposed by the government 
 that then was that education apart from religion would 
 be acceptable to all, and I think that in Ireland any light 
 is better than the darkness they have, and therefore, 
 for one, I was not disposed to complain of these institu- 
 tions. No religion was to be taught, the only subjects 
 were to be sciences, literature, mathematics, languages, 
 history, philosophy. It is true I felt pity for the poor
 
 306 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 professors who might be appointed, because I cannot 
 conceive how it is possible still very talented men might 
 contrive to effect it but I say, I cannot see how it is 
 possible to teach any thing upon earth, and yet keep out 
 the word and get rid of the continual presence of God, 
 who is the Author of all science, and the end of all lite- 
 rature. Yet any light is better there than no light. These 
 colleges were appointed. Two-thirds of the Roman 
 Catholic bishops of Ireland approved of the plan, and ex- 
 pressed themselves thankful for it. I thought this was 
 a token for good. They expected to make proselytes. We 
 expected to do the same. One bishop, who calls himself 
 blasphemously enough, I cannot but feel " the Lion 
 of the tribe of Judah," protested against the colleges. 
 The matter was referred to the Pope. Did Pius IX. say, 
 I have no jurisdiction in Ireland? Only ten days ago, 
 this same Pope Pius IX., the liberal Pope, the reforming 
 Pope, issued his bull, in which he declares his decision 
 against them. These colleges must be left to moulder in 
 the winds of heaven, not a bishop who approves of them 
 dare patronize them, not one Papist dare enter them. 
 The bishops, the priests, and the people, all obey, as if 
 it were the bidding of a god. A power resides upon the 
 banks of the Tiber that can command by a word seven 
 millions of the population of Great Britain. 
 
 By way of illustrating the origin of this power assumed 
 and, in the case of Ireland, wielded by the Pope, I will 
 quote from the very same paper, U Univers, not only the 
 description of the Pope's consecration, but the descrip- 
 tion also of his coronation. The Pope receives not only 
 the mitre, which would make him the summits sacerdos, 
 or Pontifex Maximus, but he receives also the tiara, 
 which has quite a distinct and separate meaning, and I 
 will show you what its meaning is, by referring to the 
 words used at the ceremony. " The cardinal puts on 
 the tiara" the tiara is a cap composed of three 
 crowns. There have been various mystic interpretations 
 of it some have explained it to denote that the Pope is 
 lord of heaven, that is the first crown ; lord of earth, that 
 is the second ; and lord of hell, or rather of purgatory,
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 307 
 
 that is the third. But whatever be the meaning of it, 
 the words used in the ceremony, when the tiara is placed 
 upon the Pope's head, are, " Receive thou the tiara 
 adorned with three crowns, in token that thou art the 
 father of princes and kings, the governor of the world, 
 the vicar of our Saviour Jesus Christ upon earth, to 
 whom be glory and honour, for ever and ever, Amen." 
 
 Such then is the record of the consecration and coron- 
 ation of the Pope. Having heard these strange and ex- 
 traordinary pretensions, you cannot, if you are acquainted 
 with your Bibles, but instinctively revert to that striking 
 description which the Apostle Paul gives to the Thessa- 
 lonians, of one that " sitteth in the temple of God, saying 
 that he is God, and exalteth himself above all that is 
 called God." Every expression used by the Apostle is 
 ecclesiastical and distinctly allusive. The word " sitteth" 
 is there Kadtvai, which is the origin of the word cathedral. 
 The meaning of cathedra is strictly a seat and the ca- 
 thedral was the church which contained the bishop's 
 cathedral or chief seat. Now when the Apostle speaks 
 of the Pope, he says, that he will have his cathedral in 
 the church vaog that is, the most sacred end the high 
 altar ; thus veto?, the word that he uses for temple, is not 
 the common word that is employed for temple in the New 
 Testament, but a totally different word, the most sacred 
 place of the temple, or, as the Roman Catholic would say, 
 the altar end of the temple. Now, says the Apostle, he 
 sits there, opposing and " exalting himself above all that 
 is called God, or that is worshipped, showing himself 
 that he is God." I will now read to you a document 
 which also conveys the same idea of blasphemies for 
 that is the Scripture epithet bestowed on the assumptions 
 of the Pope. The quotation is authoritative, being from 
 one of the symbolical books of the Church of Rome. It 
 is entitled, Libri Symbolic! Ecclesise Catholicse editi a 
 Streitwolf, Getting. 1838. The passage I now quote is 
 to be found in vol. ii. p. 343, and it is called the Con- 
 fession of the Catholic faith to be taken by all Protestants 
 in Hungary, conforming to that faith. " First, we con- 
 fess that we have been brought from heresy to the Roman 
 x2
 
 308 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 faith, by the diligence of the Fathers of the Society of 
 Jesus. Secondly, we confess that the Pope of Rome is 
 head of the Church, and cannot err. Thirdly, we con- 
 fess and are certain that the Pope of Rome is Vicar of 
 Christ, and has plenary power of retaining and remitting 
 sins, according to his will, and of thrusting men down 
 into hell. Fourthly, we confess that whatever new thing 
 the Pope of Rome may have instituted, whether it be in 
 Scripture or out of Scripture, is true, divine, and full of 
 salvation, and therefore ought to be regarded as of higher 
 value by lay-people than even the precepts of the living 
 God. Fifthly, we confess that the most holy PontiiF 
 ought to be honoured by all with divine honour, with 
 more prostration than even what is due to Christ him- 
 self." Now, recollect, this document is not a document 
 propounded in this country, but a document restricted to 
 Hungary, propounded by the Jesuits, and set forth in 
 the year 1838, as a creed to be received by all that 
 become converts from Protestantism to Romish super- 
 stition. And the llth article of this document is, " We 
 confess that the Pope has power of altering Scripture, 
 or increasing or diminishing it according to his will." 
 How truly descriptive of him who openeth his mouth 
 in blasphemy, blaspheming the temple and the name of 
 God! 
 
 Another class of proofs of Papal blasphemy I take 
 from the Moral Theology of Liguori, whose writings have 
 recently been brought before the public by an esteemed 
 friend of my own, the Rev. Mr. Blakeney, incumbent of 
 a church in Nottingham. 
 
 In 1839 Liguori was canonized, that is, declared by 
 the Pope to be a saint in heaven, and a collect was drawn 
 up, which is in every Roman Catholic missal, and is 
 prayed by every Roman Catholic once a year. " O 
 God, who didst give blessed Liguori to be a doctor to 
 thy Church, grant that we may be enlightened by his 
 doctrine, and benefited by his intercession." Before he 
 was canonized there were twenty different examinations 
 made of his writings, and all were pronounced faultless ; 
 four Popes declared his writings were absolutely perfect ;
 
 WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 309 
 
 the Sacred Congregation of Rites at Rome, composed of 
 cardinals and bishops, declared they had examined his 
 Moral Theology, and there was nothing in it in the least 
 degree untrue. He was canonized by a Pope, he is now 
 worshipped by Roman Catholics ; his doctrines, of 
 course, are of the highest authority, next to Church au- 
 thority itself, and in giving extracts from it I quote the 
 acknowledged theology of the Church. Now let me 
 show what he says by way of proving, however uninten- 
 tionally, that the Pope is the wild beast from the abyss, 
 that openeth his mouth in blasphemy. First of all, on 
 the fourth commandment, that is, " Remember the Sab- 
 bath day to keep it holy," you will find it stated by him, 
 " The Pope can decree that the observance of the Lord's 
 day shall continue only for a few hours." He assumes 
 the power of enlarging or restricting a divine command- 
 ment. Again, on the commandment, " Thou shalt not 
 kill," Liguori quotes with approbation this sentiment, 
 " Those who are confined in prisons may slay themselves, 
 or commit suicide, for the purpose of avoiding the certain 
 sentence of death." On another commandment, " Thou 
 shalt not steal," Liguori says, " A servant can, according 
 to his own judgment, compensate himself for his labours, 
 if he think that he deserves more wages than those that 
 he has received." Thus, then, you have the Papal power 
 annulling the commandments of God, setting itself above 
 God, and pronouncing that to be void which God has 
 pronounced to be eternal and unchangeable. But, lest 
 it should be supposed that there is any thing strange or 
 startling in this, I will quote similar instances from 
 catechisms I hold in my hand. I have four Roman 
 Catholic catechisms bound together for the sake of con- 
 venience. The first is a catechism composed by the 
 four Roman Catholic archbishops of Ireland, and the 
 ten commandments are contained in it thus : " Repeat the 
 ten commandments of God. A. I am the Lord thy 
 God ; thou shalt not have strange gods before me. 2. 
 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God 
 in vain." Now every one acquainted with his Bible 
 misses a whole commandment. The Roman Catholic
 
 310 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Church divides the Decalogue differently from us. I give 
 her all the credit of that, but what we complain of is, 
 that she has left out what we Protestants enumerate as 
 the second command, and what she herself, according to 
 her own arrangement, must call nine-tenths of the first 
 commandment. You naturally inquire, what can be the 
 reason of that ? The answer is plain. It was left to the 
 Pope either to raise his worship to the height of the re- 
 quirements of God's word, or to bring down God's word 
 to the depth of the debasement of his worship ; he pre- 
 ferred the latter, and made God's word suit his worship, 
 instead of making his worship suit God's word. He 
 " opened his mouth in blasphemy against God." And lest 
 you should think that this was extraordinary, I will pro- 
 duce another specimen, from another quarter. I have 
 here a catechism that was picked up in the streets of 
 Rome, by a lady, a friend of mine ; and if there be sacred- 
 ness in its soil, as our Tractarian friends assert, there is 
 sacredness in this catechism, for it is covered by the mud 
 from which it was picked up by this lady. This cate- 
 chism was issued under the authority of the Roman 
 Pontiff, drawn up by Bellarmine, the celebrated Roman 
 cardinal, and published in 1839. In this catechism the 
 second commandment is omitted, just as it is in the Irish 
 one ; but in addition to this, our fourth commandment is 
 thus given, " Recordati de santificare le feste," that is, 
 " Remember to keep holy the festivals." The Sabbath 
 is thus expunged from the law, in the exercise of the 
 same power which is arrogated by the Pope. No man 
 can set himself more distinctly above God than he who 
 pretends to annul and set aside God's commandments I 
 Would not that man be setting himself above our Queen 
 who should assume to invalidate the laws of our land ? 
 The fourth commandment is cast out in the Italian cate- 
 chism from the ten. The Sabbath, in short, is cast away 
 and the inventions of men substituted for the institu- 
 tions and appointments of God. 
 
 Thus, then, I have given you the evidences, that the 
 Pope opens his mouth in blasphemies. In speaking, how- 
 ever, of the Pope's liberties with the law of God, let me
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 311 
 
 say I have always admired one thing in the Church of 
 England. There is much that I admire in every section 
 of the Church. What Christian will not admire the 
 spirituality of one section, the energy and devotedness of 
 a second, and the stability and resources of a third ! but 
 one thing in the Church of England I like the ten 
 commandments, in full, are painted on the walls of her 
 churches. I think I shall have them written in their 
 Protestant fulness on the walls of my own church, as 
 soon as the walls are dry. It is a beautiful protest 
 against that Church that suppresses one, and mistrans- 
 lates, perverts, and corrupts another. Let the Papist 
 stick up his images ; but let the Protestant inscribe texts 
 alone, our only images, on the walls of his church. I may 
 give another instance of this making void the command- 
 ments of God, by quoting from the Moral Theology of 
 another distinguished writer in the Roman Catholic 
 Church. I need not tell you, perhaps, that there is a 
 college in Ireland called the Royal College of St. Patrick 
 at Maynooth ; I do not Avish to make any remark in the 
 least that might be misconstrued about the institution, 
 but, surely, it cannot be interfering with things too high 
 for me, if I merely quote as pure Popery what is taught 
 there to the rising priests of Ireland, by giving extracts 
 from one of the class-books used there. We may, surely, 
 quote what we are taxed for spreading, and it can be no 
 reflection to that Church to adduce the sentiments actually 
 sanctioned by its prelates and propagated by its teachers. 
 It is from the Moral Theology of Bailly, and that part 
 which treats of the Decalogue, chap. 37, page 232. He 
 says, " How much must be stolen in order to constitute a 
 mortal sin?" How much? you observe, is the question, 
 and the answer is, "Theologians are accustomed to divide 
 men into four classes. First, those who live in splendour ; 
 Secondly, those who live on their own estates ; Thirdly, 
 tradesmen, artificers, and those who support themselves 
 by their labour ; and Fourthly, the poor." Now notice 
 what is laid down. That " mortal sin is committed by 
 persons of the third rank if sixty pence be stolen." 
 Mortal sin is defined to be sin that ruins the soul ; and 
 venial sin, "sin that does not break charity between
 
 312 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 man and man, or between man and God." A person, 
 then, who steals sixty pence from this class is guilty of a 
 mortal sin a sin for which he may be damned for ever ; 
 but if he steals to the value of fifty-nine pence three 
 farthings, he is only guilty of a venial sin, which does 
 not break charity between man and man or between God 
 and man. Heaven and hell are suspended on a half- 
 penny ! ! Thus, you observe, by a sophistry the most 
 plausible, by an argument the most refined, the com- 
 mandments of God are made of none effect through the 
 traditions of men. Thus the Pope assumes power and 
 prerogatives superior to God, and annuls, cancels, and 
 modifies the commandments of heaven, to suit the con- 
 veniences of earth the consciences of sinners. But I 
 must give you one or two more illustrations of this 
 point. In the fourth session of the Lateran, a Venetian 
 prelate thus addressed the Pope : (you will recollect 
 what I am illustrating, viz. " his opening his mouth 
 in blasphemies against God" his being guilty of blas- 
 phemy :) " Thou art our Shepherd, our Physician, in 
 short, a second God upon earth." At the sixth session 
 of the Lateran, the bishop of Modrusium called the 
 Pope, " The Lion of the tribe of Judah the promised 
 Saviour. Thou shalt rule from sea to sea." On the 
 election of a Pope, the following words are used, even 
 by the Conclave ; " I tell you good tidings of great joy, 
 (you recollect when these words were employed before,) 
 a new Pope is elected." 
 
 Cardinal Bellarmine says, " The Pope is the father 
 of fathers, the pontiff of Christians, the prince of priests, 
 the vicar of Christ, the head of the body the Church, 
 the foundation of the building, the universal bishop." 
 Again, Lord Anthony Pucci, in the ninth session of the 
 fifth Lateran, said, " The sight of thy divine majesty," 
 addressing the Pope, " does not a little terrify me, for I 
 am not ignorant that all power, both in heaven and in 
 earth, is given unto you ; that prophetic saying is ful- 
 filled in you, ' All the kings of the earth shall worship 
 him, and all the nations shall serve him.'" The bishop of 
 Bitonto at the Council of Trent, in 1 546, said, " The Pope 
 is come a light into the world, and men love darkness
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 313 
 
 rather than light." Pope Nicholas, addressing the em- 
 peror Michael, says, " The Pope, who is called God by 
 Constantine, can never be bound or released by man, 
 for God cannot be judged by man." Of Alexander VI. 
 it was said, " Cassar was a man, Alexander was a God." 
 
 I have thus given extracts to prove that the Pope 
 answers to the Apocalyptic description, " opening his 
 mouth in blasphemy." And if the Pope be not the 
 power that answers to that Apocalyptic description, I ask 
 you to specify any power in the last nineteen centuries 
 of the Church, in any portion of the Church, that makes 
 the faintest approximation to the portrait here sketched, 
 or so vividly fulfils the prophetic description. 
 
 It is next said in this chapter, xiii. 14, " These kings 
 have one mind, and shall give their power and strength 
 unto the beast." In the eighth century to give an illus- 
 tration of this Gregory II. boasted " all the kings of 
 the west reverence the Pope as God." Charlemagne 
 received his title and his empire as a donative from the 
 Pope. The western emperors took an oath " to be sub- 
 missive to the Pontiif and to the Roman Church." The 
 Spanish king resigned his kingdom that he might receive 
 it again at the hand of the Pope. John, king of England, 
 resigned his crown to the Pope's legate that he might 
 receive it as the vassal of the Roman see. It was the 
 duty of kings of old to hold the Pope's stirrup, and to 
 kiss his foot. Pope Celestine III., A. D. 1191, struck off 
 Henry VI. the German emperor's crown with his foot. 
 Pope Pius V. deposed Queen Elizabeth, declaring " God 
 hath set me as a prince over all nations, to root out 
 and to pull down, to destroy and to build." The 
 Church of Rome has not renounced that deposition : 
 and, at this moment, the bull, " in Coena Domini," an 
 authentic document of Rome, denounces, not only 
 Elizabeth, but all her successors holding heretical, i. e. 
 Protestant, principles. And to show that the Church of 
 Rome was not ashamed of Pius V. for denouncing and 
 absolving the subjects of Elizabeth from their allegiance, 
 she has introduced into her Breviary the following col- 
 lect : " O God, who for crushing the enemies of thy
 
 314 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Church, didst choose the blessed Pius as Pope" crush- 
 ing not the heresies, but the "enemies" of the Church. 
 Thus she celebrates the deeds and proclaims the glory of 
 that Pontiff who dared to depose the Queen of England, 
 and to absolve all her subjects from their lawful allegiance. 
 And not only were kings thus submissive to the Papal 
 power, but the people were no less so. They believed 
 his dogmas, they feared his bulls, and they paid for his 
 indulgences ; and Gerson, the most enlightened speaker 
 at the Council of Trent, said, " The people think of the 
 Pope as they think of the one God." And the Sicilian 
 ambassadors sent there thus addressed the Pope : " Oh 
 Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world." 
 In one word, " all the earth wondered after the beast," 
 and " all that dwell in 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." 
 
 The next feature in this description of the wild beast 
 from the abyss is, that he should war with the saints and 
 overcome them ; in the seventeenth chapter, the woman 
 is described as drunk with the blood of the saints and 
 with the " blood of the martyrs of Jesus." Need I refer 
 to the Inquisition, which sent its emissaries like an argus- 
 eyed police into every land, that made the father accuse 
 the son, and the son the father, and infected the whole 
 social atmosphere of Europe with one terrible and fear- 
 ful suspiciousness, so that no man felt that he was safe 
 when he spoke to his fellow no relative was sure that 
 what he unbosomed to his nearest relative would not be 
 made a reason for placing him in the Inquisition, a pri- 
 soner for life, or a victim doomed to death. I need not 
 mention the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Who has 
 not read of the massacre of St. Bartholomew ? Hear a 
 sketch of it. 
 
 " At length Charles IX., casting his half-closed eyes on 
 the floor, gave the fatal order for the murder of his 
 subjects. The alarm-bell of St. Germain was instantly 
 rung, and in a moment the Palais, the Tuileries, the 
 banks of the river, the public places, the streets, the 
 churches and edifices, of Paris were brilliantly illuminated.
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 31o 
 
 " Guided by those terrible lights which enveloped the 
 capital as in a circle of fire, they distinguished the dwell- 
 ings of heretics by the fresh-made marks. ' Open by 
 command of the king,' was the order given by the mur- 
 derers. Some hastened to obey, ami their lives were 
 extinguished with the lights which they brought to see 
 who called them ; others, opening their windows to dis- 
 cover who knocked at so unseasonable an hour, fell, 
 struck by twenty balls at once : another, burying himself 
 in the bed-clothes, would perhaps pretend to be fast 
 asleep ; his door was shattered in pieces, and two or three 
 assassins, separating from the rest, ran and slaughtered 
 him in his bed. Sometimes they left the house unstained 
 with blood ; but dragging the victim from his couch 
 into the street, they gave him up to the weapons of the 
 populace. As the spoils of the doomed were to belong 
 to those who should despatch them, a thousand blades 
 were raised at once over the unfortunate wretch, whose 
 death, swift as lightning, left no time for pain. Happy 
 they who were thus surprised in their first sleep ; their 
 sufferings were brief; but when the hands of the mur- 
 derers became wearied with slaughter, the agony of the 
 sufferer was prolonged for hours. 
 
 " While blood was thus spilt in torrents before the eyes 
 of the queen-mother, the bell of the Palais rang ; and the 
 general massacre began. At this signal, Tavennes and 
 the duke of Nevers drew their swords, crying, ' Kill ! kill ! ' 
 The night-guards, the citizens among whom arms had 
 been distributed, the whole tribe of murderers, sallied 
 forth from their lurking-places, repeating, ' Kill ! kill ! ' 
 The shrill sound of the bells, the clatter of arms, the 
 vagabond tramp of the assassins, the flickering glare of 
 torches, mingled with shouts, which the night-echo 
 rendered still more horrible. The massacre then became 
 general ; there was no pity for sex, age, or condition ; 
 no blood came amiss provided that it circulated in here- 
 tic veins ; and these were the signs by which the heretic 
 was distinguished. Whoever shuts his door at the 
 approach of an armed band is a heretic ; whoever refuses 
 to answer, or begs his life, is a heretic ; whoever has not
 
 3J6 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 a white badge on his arm is a heretic ; whoever does not 
 come when the murderer calls is a heretic. The assas- 
 sins had no need to speak : here were no judges ; all 
 were executioners : but, if words did now and then drop 
 from their lips, it was to complain to one another of their 
 fatigue, or to insult the sufferer ; nay, it was often an 
 infernal laugh that greeted his last sigh. 
 
 "Pursued on all sides by those insidious flames with 
 which the capital was lit up, driven like a flock of sheep, 
 tracked like deer, in vain did the Protestants endeavour to 
 flee from fate. If they would have sought refuge in the 
 Catholic churches, armed men guarded the doors of the 
 sanctuary ; if they approached the Louvre, the Swiss 
 awaited them with presented muskets ; if they burst open 
 the prison-doors, to conceal themselves among the male- 
 factors whom the justice of men had condemned, thejailers 
 denounced or drove them out by main force. If they 
 attempted to gain the banks of the river, the implements 
 of destruction were quite ready; boat-hooks to catch 
 them in their flight and to knock them on the head, 
 poles to thrust them into the water. If they took shelter 
 in the dark, they fell into the snares of an assassin lurk- 
 ing for human prey ; if they sought the light, the light 
 was deadly as the darkness : death was every where, in 
 their beds, in their house-tops, within, without, in the 
 public places, and in the very waters of the river. 
 
 " They were flung alive into the Seine, and dragged 
 out to be plunged in again : if the unfortunate creatures, 
 struggling against the current, contrived to reach the 
 shore, invisible hands, armed with sharp spikes, thrust 
 them back into the stream, which drove some upon the 
 sand of an islet facing the Louvre, and carried others 
 towards Chaillot, Auteuil, St. Cloud, and the adjacent 
 parts, to which these carcasses carried terror and infec- 
 tion. The grave-diggers were too few in number, or 
 worked to death. The Prevot des Marchands and the 
 echevins were obliged to double their wages to induce 
 them to go to those distant places to bury the corpses of 
 heretics : a column of them started, carrying along with 
 them all the ordinary implements of their calling, and it
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 317 
 
 was several days befoi'e they returned to Paris. It is 
 calculated, that in this interval about eleven hundred 
 drowned persons were interred. The boatmen distin- 
 guished themselves in this abominable night ; standing 
 up in their light barks, they cleft the water with the 
 rapidity of lightning, striking the heads that rose above 
 the surface, separating the hands clasped in the last 
 prayer, and lifting up bodies by the garments and drop- 
 ping them back into the abyss, till they were sure that 
 the victim was suffocated. 
 
 " Suspended, not interrupted, the carnage recom- 
 menced at eight in the morning, but with colder and still 
 more ingenious cruelty than before : if the victims were 
 multiplied, so were the executioners. Darkness no longer 
 shrouded the abode of the heretic from the eye of sus- 
 picion : there was now no inaccessible retreat, and places 
 were ransacked to which the light of day never pene- 
 trated. How many of the Protestants now regretted that 
 darkness, and deplored the return of that light which 
 they had so earnestly solicited of God in their prayers ! 
 The sun, it is true, beamed upon the vengeance of some 
 of those who sold their lives dearly, and stained the 
 thresholds of houses with the blood of the victors. Al- 
 most all expired with folded hands and faces turned 
 towards the palace of the sovereign. 
 
 " Such were the last scenes of the ever-memorable 
 drama of St. Bartholomew. A month after St. Germain's 
 bell had given the signal, all the dead were not buried. 
 Some were yet floating on the Seine, to which fishermen 
 resorted for the purpose of picking them up and selling 
 them to any who chose to buy them. For a long time, 
 there was an auction of corpses on both banks of the 
 river, which was publicly cried, and at which the lots 
 were adjudged to the highest bidder. Some buyers bu- 
 ried their purchases by night in sequestered spots ; others 
 burned those whom they loved while living, and collected 
 their ashes in urns which afterwards constituted orna- 
 ments of their habitations. For above a year, people 
 durst not pass at night along the banks of the river ; 
 some said that they had seen the earth quake there, others 
 had beheld spectres gliding along the water : fishermen
 
 318 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 had asserted that invisible hands loosed after dark the 
 boats moored to the shore, and propelled them towards 
 the islets in the Seine, which sent forth moans like those 
 of human voices. In some old historians, we read that 
 young females, murdered on St. Bartholomew's day, wan- 
 dered about after dusk in Paris, covered with long veils, 
 which they lifted when they perceived the murderer, 
 showing him the wound still fresh, and calling him by 
 his name. The grave De Thou has not disdained to 
 collect some of these popular traditions." 
 
 There is no reason to doubt that the Pope was privy 
 to the intended massacre. " Cardinal Alexandrin, 
 nephew of the late Pope, had made no secret of ex- 
 pecting intelligence of a great victory gained over the 
 heretics, and exclaimed, when it arrived, ' The king 
 of France has kept his word ! ' ' Good news ! good 
 news ! ' cried Gregory XIII., who had been crowned 
 about two months before the catastrophe, ' all the Lu- 
 therans are massacred except the Vendomets, whom the 
 king has pardoned for his sister's sake.' That term 
 he applied contemptuously to the three princes of the 
 house of Bourbon- Vendome, the king of Navarre, and 
 the princes of Conde and Conti. At night the guns 
 of the castle of St. Angelo were fired, and bonfires 
 blazed in every street in Rome. The Pope ordered a 
 jubilee and a solemn procession, which he accompanied 
 himself, to thank God for this glorious success. He 
 sent a nuncio extraordinary to France to congratulate 
 the king on having so easily caught all the heretics 
 in the same net. * Medals, which I have seen, were 
 struck at Rome, in approbation of the massacre, and to 
 perpetuate the memory of the happy event : on one 
 side was the portrait of the Pope ; on the reverse the 
 destroying angel, holding a cross in one hand, and in 
 the other a sword, with which he is slaughtering the 
 Frenchmen called Protestants ; and having this legend, 
 HUGONOTORUM STRAGES the slaughter of the Hugue- 
 nots. In short, no demonstration of this great triumph 
 of the Church of Rome, of the Church militant, over 
 her enemies, was omitted : and that Buon Compagno 
 might keep his work incessantly before his eyes, he had 
 * I have one in my possession.
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 319 
 
 a large picture of the massacre painted and hung up in 
 the Vatican. A scroll at the top of it contained these 
 words : PONTIFEX COLINII NECEM PEOBAT ' The 
 Pontiff approves the murder of Coligni.' ' To this day,' 
 says Brizard, whose work on the massacre appeared in 
 1790, 'the French who visit Italy behold, not without 
 indignation, this picture, which, though half effaced, 
 still portrays but too faithfully our calamities and the 
 excesses of Rome.' 
 
 " The Cardinal of Lorraine was at Rome when the 
 news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew arrived there. 
 He was so transported with joy at the success of a plan 
 which he justly considered as in part his work, that he 
 gave a thousand gold crowns to the gentleman sent by 
 his brother, the duke of Aumale, with the welcome in- 
 telligence. At his instigation, the Pope and the cardinals 
 ordered a general jubilee and public processions. He 
 went in procession himself to the church of St. Louis, 
 the patron saint of France, where they attended, with 
 all the nobility of Rome. The cardinal officiated in full 
 pomp and splendour. On the front of the church was a 
 long inscription, purporting that ' the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine, in the name of the most Christian king, Charles 
 IX., was returning thanks to God, and congratulating 
 our holy Father the Pope Gregory XIII., and the sacred 
 College of Cardinals, on the astonishing and incredible 
 success which had attended the counsels given by the 
 Holy See, the success which it had sent, and the prayers 
 which his Holiness had never ceased to offer for the last 
 twelve years." 
 
 Roman Catholics are but too able to reply, Some of 
 your Protestant reformers also persecuted in their turn. 
 I believe the right course is not to deny what is true, for 
 the cause of truth will never be assisted by shield or 
 sword from the armoury of falsehood, but to admit plainly 
 and candidly that it is too true that Calvin acquiesced in 
 the burning of Servetus ; Cranmer sanctioned the exe- 
 cution of two Anabaptists ; John Knox, as I told you on 
 a previous occasion, held that all Roman Catholics, in 
 Scotland at least, ought to be put to death. But when
 
 320 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Roman Catholics state such facts as these, our reply is 
 very plain : first, they persecuted as individuals. The 
 Church of Rome persecutes as a Church. Secondly, these 
 men were first priests of the Church of Rome ; they 
 learned their persecuting principles by being taught in 
 the colleges of Rome. Instead of being charges against 
 Protestantism, they are the evidences of their connexion 
 with that system, some of the principles of which they 
 carried with them into a holier and a purer communion. 
 And lastly, Protestants of every name have improved ; 
 they now denounce persecution : the Romish Church re- 
 tains it ; Rome is stationary. We improve. If the sword 
 is to be unsheathed if the faggot is to be lighted, we say, 
 let that sword be unsheathed, let that faggot be lighted 
 by the foes, not by the friends of Christianity. A good 
 cause was never put down by the sword, and a bad cause 
 was never permanently benefited by it. " The weapons 
 of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God 
 to the pulling down of strong holds." 
 
 Now I must just occupy your time for eight minutes 
 longer ; as I wish to finish this subject this evening, 
 and to enter upon another and very important one next 
 evening. We come to the other wild beast that was 
 to arise, and " exercise all the power of the first beast 
 before him, and cause the earth and them that dwell 
 therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound 
 was healed." Who was the second beast who is men- 
 tioned in this chapter ? Mr. Elliott has been the first 
 to show conclusively the application. This second wild 
 beast exercises all the power of the first beast, as it 
 is in the original, evuinov, in the presence of, or, as it 
 might be translated, with the authority or under the 
 episcopacy of the first wild beast. The first wild beast, 
 I showed you, was the Pope ; the second wild beast ex- 
 ercises his powers subject to the authority of the Pope, 
 and this second wild beast had also the "horns of a 
 lamb," but " spake as a dragon." Christ speaks of 
 false teachers as "wolves in sheep's clothing." Illus- 
 trating one passage by the other, I conclude that the 
 symbol here used is descriptive of the character of false
 
 THE WILD BEA.ST FROM THE SEA. 321 
 
 teachers, and therefore that the second wild beast de- 
 notes the whole missionary instrumentality of the Church 
 of Rome her bishops, her cardinals, her priests, her 
 Jesuits, those skilful emissaries called the Janissaries of 
 the Church of Rome, as distinct from and dependent on the 
 'Pope. I need not tell you that the clergy of the Church 
 of Rome are totally different from the clergy of any 
 other ecclesiastical communion. The ministers of every 
 Church upon earth, except the Romish Church, may 
 marry, and thus create social circles around them ; the 
 Roman Catholic priest must not do so. You ask, per- 
 haps, why it is so ? Never did Satan hit upon a cleverer 
 artifice than the celibacy of the clergy. It is the strength 
 of the Romish pyramid, for whenever a man marries he 
 becomes the centre of a little circle likely to absorb a 
 large share of his sympathies, and to awake within him 
 the pleasures of a parent, and the affection of a husband. 
 But in the Church of Rome the priest may not marry : 
 hence all his sympathies must circulate within the great 
 visible corporation, to which he is entirely devoted and 
 attached. It absorbs the man. It is the circumference 
 of all his cares. Therefore every Roman Catholic priest- 
 feels the deepest interest in the aggrandizement, expan- 
 sion, and glory of that visible corporation called the 
 Roman Catholic Church, an interest which he would 
 not feel to be so exclusive and absorbing were he the 
 centre of a circle of his own. The individual is lost in 
 the aggregate, the personal is merged in the corporate. 
 He is a mere cog or crank in the vast machine. The 
 Papal pyramid would be materially weakened but for 
 the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy. 
 
 It is said that this wild beast was to be lamb-like in 
 its horns, but dragon-like in its tongue. Appearing to 
 be the ministers of Christ, the priests are the ministers 
 of Antichrist. Professing to be the lambs of the Lord, 
 they are really the destroying dragons of the Apostacy. 
 
 They exercise, it is said, all the power of the first beast, 
 and had power to do great miracles, and signs, and lying 
 wonders, all "in the presence (or under the superin- 
 tendence) of the first beast." Priests are the delegates of 
 the Pope : they curse and bless in the village as the Pope
 
 322 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 does in Christendom. Mosheim, by way of illustrating 
 Popish miracles, says, "In former ages heresy was silenced 
 by two things, the authority of the Church and miracles." 
 I need not enumerate the pretended miracles of the 
 Church of Rome her moving and winking images 
 her weeping Madonnas. I need not remind you of the 
 well-known lying wonder the liquefaction of the blood 
 of St. Januarius at Naples nor of the mesmeric mira- 
 cles to which Lord Shrewsbury has given credit and 
 currency. Who has not heard of the miraculous 
 medals consecrated by a Pope, one of which, a perfect 
 wonder-worker, was lately hung round the neck of a 
 Protestant lady in Cornwall, and was (so says the priest) 
 the means of converting her to the Roman Catholic 
 faith, and her case is quoted as proof of the miraculous 
 efficacy of the medal ? I need not do more than quote 
 the great standing miracle performed by the priests (as 
 they believe) Transubstantiation in which they de- 
 clare, with monstrous impiety, that they bring Christ 
 down from heaven, and place him bodily upon their 
 altars. " He maketh fire come down from heaven," is 
 the very description of the curses and anathemas of the 
 Church of Rome, and these, therefore, are the fulfilment 
 of this prophecy. At the excommunication of the Em- 
 peror Frederick by Pope Innocent, at the first Council 
 of Lyons, the following illustration of the Apocalyptic 
 statement " he maketh fire to come down from heaven " 
 is recorded : " These words, uttered in the midst of 
 the Council, struck the hearers with terror as with flash- 
 ing thunderbolts, when, with candles lighted and flaring 
 down, the Lord Pope and assisting prelates flashed their 
 lightning fire against the Emperor Frederick." It occa- 
 sionally scathed kingdoms in the shape .of interdicts, the 
 effect of which was to close the churches, stop the cele- 
 bration of sacraments, and all service over the dead. In 
 the Pontificals Rornanum, the great directory of the 
 priests and prelates of the Romish Church, is the follow- 
 ing curse, often recently pronounced, and familiar to 
 every priest : 
 
 " By the authority of the Omnipotent God, and of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul, his apostles, we firmly, and
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 323 
 
 under the threat of anathema, enjoin that no one carry 
 off these virgins or religious persons here present from 
 divine service, to which, under the standard of chastity, 
 they have been dedicated, that no one plunder their 
 property, but that they enjoy it in quiet. If any one 
 shall have presumed to attempt this, may he be cursed 
 in his home and out of his home, may he be cursed in 
 the state, (or city,) and in the field, cursed in watching, 
 and cursed in sleeping, ciu*sed in eating and drinking, 
 cursed in walking and sitting, MAY HIS FLESH AND HIS 
 
 BONES BE CURSED, AND FROM THE SOLE OF HIS FOOT 
 TO THE CROWN OF HIS HEAD MAY HE ENJOY NO HEALTH. 
 
 May there light upon him the curse which the Lord sent 
 in the law, by Moses, on the sons of iniquity. May his 
 name be erased from the book of the living, and not be 
 recorded with the righteous. May his portion and his 
 heritage be with Cain the fratricide, with Dathan and 
 Abiram, with Ananias and Sapphira, with Simon Magus 
 and with Judas the traitor, and with those who said to 
 God, ' Depart from us, we will not follow thy ways.' 
 
 MAY ETERNAL FIRE DEVOUR HIM WITH THE DEVIL AND 
 
 His ANGELS, unless he make restitution, and come to 
 amendment. So be it. So be it." 
 
 Such is the curse which every priest pronounces on 
 the proper occasion. Cursing by bell, book, and candle 
 is common in Ireland ; and when these curses are pro- 
 nounced, lighted candles are flung upon the earth, and 
 thus they seem to make fire descend from heaven. 
 
 Then the second beast, it is said, caused all the in- 
 habitants of the earth to worship the first beast. What 
 is the great aim and design of the Romish clergy ? To 
 be caterers for the Pope ; to make proselytes to their 
 Lord Pope, under whose episcopacy they act ; to make 
 all the inhabitants of the earth to worship and obey the 
 Roman Pontiff. " We declare, affirm, and define, that 
 submission to the Roman Pontiff is necessary to salva- 
 tion " is their unanimous belief. " The monks of the 
 seventeenth century," says Mosheim, " held up the Pope 
 to the veneration of the people as God." 
 
 " Saying to them that dwell in the earth, that 
 y 2
 
 324 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 they should make an image to the beast." This subject 
 was one which has been the occasion of much difficulty ; 
 but Mr. Elliot, I think, has solved the difficulty by show- 
 ing, on, I think, sufficient evidence, that the image of the 
 beast which they had power to make, is the SYNODS and 
 GENERAL COUNCILS of the Romish Church ; and that 
 this is not a mere fanciful interpretation, I think will be 
 plain from the following evidence. Tertullian, a Latin 
 Father, calls Councils the ipsa representatio, or very re- 
 presentation of the Church. The word representatio 
 means the likeness of a party who is absent, but as 
 true as if the party were present. After the Reform Bill 
 was passed in the Parliament of England, a very cele- 
 brated speaker in. the midst of that assembly said : " This 
 House is now the real and express image" the very 
 word that is here used in the Apocalypse " and repre- 
 sentation of the country." The original word tk-do-, 
 which is in this place translated image, has been fre- 
 quently used as the proper and appropriate expression 
 for a General Council. 
 
 " To give life to the image of the beast, that the 
 image of the beast should both speak," &c. v. 15. 
 When a Council met, the laity were present, but the 
 priests alone could vote ; and when the Council had 
 issued its decision, it was by a majority of the clergy. 
 Thus it may truly be said that it was the clergy in a 
 Council that gave breath to the image of the beast, by 
 embodying its mind. Though Councils assume to be 
 free, the Pope inspired the clergy, and they originated 
 all their conclusions. In the fourth Lateran, at which 
 one thousand bishops were present, seventy canons were 
 dictated by the Pope, and received by the council. The 
 Pope's powers were ultimately more restrained ; but his 
 power of suspending, revoking, or dissolving a Council 
 gave him practically the power of swaying it. Hence 
 the Pope and his tools, the clergy, were substantially 
 the Council. And the decrees of the Council of Trent 
 were not the conclusions of all the bishops in Christen- 
 dom, but the collected sentiments of the Pope's own 
 creatures, and of these only.
 
 THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA. 325 
 
 Next, the second beast was to cause as many as would 
 not worship the image of the beast to be killed. The 
 great end of Councils and the priests were really the 
 Councils was the extirpation of heretics. The third 
 Lateran decrees the extermination of heretics. The 
 fourth Lateran decrees the confiscation of their goods. 
 All history with its thousand tongues, and Scripture 
 with its one emphatic voice, declare, that when Rome 
 had the power, that power displayed itself in deeds of 
 blood ; and from the snow-clad Alps, that have been 
 trodden by the feet of roving barbarians, to the sacred 
 heights of Calvary itself, there is no spot which has 
 not been drenched with the blood of the martyrs of 
 Jesus, and from which that blood does not cry to heaven 
 for vengeance on the persecutor of the saints. 
 
 In conclusion, let me draw your attention to the last 
 distinction which identifies, and, like a clasp, binds to- 
 gether the whole, viz. the number of the beast: that 
 number is declared to be 666. In our English language 
 we use what are called Arabic numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., 
 quite separate and distinct from the letters of the alpha- 
 bet ; but in the Greek language there are no numerals 
 distinct from the letters ; hence the letters of the alpha- 
 bet are employed instead of numerals. In ancient times 
 all slaves, soldiers, and devotees to a god had their 
 characteristic stigmata ; and so the wild beast from the 
 abyss has its characteristic stigma : that is, the whole 
 Church of Rome has some grand, apparent, characteristic 
 stigma something that marks distinctly that corporation 
 from all other Churches and bodies in the world. Let us 
 endeavour to ascertain what that is. I will take the 
 number 666 according to the Greek notation : X' is 30, 
 a' is 1, r is 300, e is 5, t' is 10, v is 50, o is 70, c' is 
 200. Adding together these numbers, they make ex- 
 actly 666 ; and putting all the letters together, they 
 form the word Xare irof, (Latinus,) or Latin man. His 
 prayers are Latin ; his canons Latin ; his missal Latin ; 
 his breviary Latin ; the decrees of his Councils, his bulls, 
 are all Latin ; he worships in Latin ; he blesses in 
 Latin ; he curses in Latin ; all is Latin.
 
 326 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 X = 30 
 
 a = 1 
 
 r = 300 
 
 = 5 
 
 t = 10 
 
 v = 50 
 
 o = 70 
 
 c = 200 
 
 = 666 
 
 I have thus described the wild beast as faithfully and 
 as succinctly as I could ; and I trust that in so ding I 
 have not violated the laws of charity, or the claims of 
 love. It is not from hatred to the men, but from faith- 
 fulness to God that I have made these statements. And if 
 this be true, and I am in no manner of doubt that it is 
 so, is it not a blessed thing to have the great foe clearly 
 set before us ? to have no doubt whatever about the 
 character of the enemy with whom we have to contend ? 
 I believe that all the conflicts that have befallen our 
 churches are but preparatory skirmishes all our quar- 
 rels between Churchmen and Dissenters are but child's 
 play in comparison of what comes. The . great conflict 
 already looms in the horizon ; it gathers strength and 
 approaches with greater speed every day the conflict 
 between God's truth and man's tradition between the 
 breviary of the priest and the Bible of the living God 
 between Christ, the Head, the King, the Priest, the Sa- 
 viour, and Antichrist, the great usurper, and the head of 
 the Apostacy. Let us all, then, Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters, of every name, merge the microscopic points on 
 which we differ, or melt them in the majestic points on 
 which we agree, Avhich are glorious, eternal, and infinite ! 
 What we agree in is worthy of being embalmed for ever : 
 what we differ in is, in comparison, worthy of being 
 buried. Let us love as brethren let us labour as the 
 followers of the Lamb ; and when the great conflict 
 comes, let us stand, differing in uniform, but agreeing in 
 principle, in object, in aim, in hope ; and, " if God be 
 for us, who can be against us ?"
 
 LECTURE XVII. 
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 
 
 " The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh 
 quickly. 
 
 " And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in 
 heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ ; and he shall reign for 
 ever and ever. 
 
 " And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their 
 seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, 
 
 " Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, 
 and wast, and art to come ; because thou hast taken to thee thy 
 great power, and hast reigned. 
 
 " And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time 
 of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest 
 give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, 
 and them that fear thy name, small and great ; and shouldest 
 destroy them which destroy the earth. 
 
 " And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen 
 in his temple the ark of his testament : and there were light- 
 nings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great 
 hail." REV. xi. 1419. 
 
 " And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven 
 angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of 
 God upon the earth. 
 
 " And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth ; and 
 there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had 
 the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his 
 image." REV. xvi. 1, 2. 
 
 THE two first woes have passed away. A third was 
 pronounced from the firmamental heavens, and roused an 
 echo like each of the other woes, commensurate to its 
 force from the earth. The first evidence of its respon- 
 sive echo is found in the expressions of infidels during 
 the years immediately preceding the French Revolution, 
 when the very oracles of Satan became unconsciously 
 the organs of truth. Voltaire thus writes in 1764 : 
 
 ' Every thing is preparing the way for a great revo-
 
 328 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 lution. It will undoubtedly take place, though I shall 
 not be so fortunate as to see it. Light has been diffusing 
 itself, and on the very first opportunity the French na- 
 tion will break out, and the uproar will be glorious. 
 Happy those who are young, for they will behold most 
 extraordinary things." 
 
 Christian men saw, too, the approach of the coming woe. 
 The Protestant Churches they felt had lost sight of their 
 main duty to witness to the word they had become salt 
 without savour, and, in the words of Bishop Horsley, 
 " the clergy substituted for the great doctrines of the 
 gospel a system little better than heathen ethics." 
 
 Cowper, writing of the era of the French Revolution, 
 says 
 
 " The world appears 
 
 To toll the death-knell of its own decease ; 
 And by the voice of all its elements, 
 To preach the general doom when were the winds 
 Let loose with such a warrant to destroy. 
 
 the old 
 
 And crazy earth has had her shaking fit 
 More frequent, and forgone her usual rest, 
 And nature seems, with dim and sickly eye, 
 To wait the close of all." 
 
 " Already," said Burke, in 1790, "in many parts of 
 Europe there is a hollow murmuring under ground, a 
 confused movement that threatens a general earthquake 
 of the political world." 
 
 There were also physical intimations of the coming 
 woe. In fact, almost every prediction in Scripture has 
 not only a moral and ultimate fulfilment, but a symbolical 
 and literal fulfilment also. Thus the ancient prophecy, 
 " a star shall come out of Jacob," was not only morally 
 fulfilled by the Advent of Christ, but literally also, inas- 
 much as a literal meteor star guided the Magi to the 
 manger and the overthrow of Jerusalem was predicted 
 by our Lord, as accompanied with earthquakes and 
 eclipses, which had not only their symbolical, but their 
 literal fulfilment also. We may, therefore, fairly pre- 
 sume that those earthquakes and hailstorms, which were
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 329 
 
 to be the pi-ecursors of the coming woe, had their sym- 
 bolico-literal fulfilment likewise. Thus, a tremendous 
 hurricane ravaged the whole West Indies in 1783, and 
 Vesuvius burst forth with terrific fury. Sir William 
 Hamilton gives an account of an earthquake lasting from 
 1783 to 1786, and convulsing all Italy. In 1788 a hail- 
 storm, unprecedented in fury, ravaged the harvests and 
 vintages of France. Of this storm Alison writes, vol. i. 
 p. 172, "even the elements contributed to swell the 
 public discontent. A dreadful storm of hail, in July, 
 1788, laid waste the provinces and produced such dimi- 
 nution in the harvest, as threatened the horrors of fa- 
 mine." In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. French 
 Revolution, we read thus, " On Sunday, July 13, 1788, 
 at 9 A. M., without any eclipse, a dreadful darkness 
 overspread several parts of France. It was the prelude to 
 such a tempest as is unexampled in the temperate cli- 
 mates of Europe. The soil was converted into a morass, 
 the standing corn was beaten into quagmires, vines 
 broken to pieces, fruit trees demolished, and newunmelted 
 hail lying in heaps like rocks of solid ice. The hail was 
 composed of enormous solid and angular pieces of ice, 
 weighing from eight to ten ounces, the country people 
 were beaten down in the fields amid the concussions of 
 the elements, and concluded the last day had arrived." 
 So truly was it fulfilled, "there were lightnings and thun- 
 derings, and a great hail." The moral and political con- 
 vulsions presignified by these symbols were no less pal- 
 pable. Alison says, " the minds of men were shaken at 
 this time, as by the yawning of the ground during the 
 fury of an earthquake." 
 
 Having thus seen the general character of the seventh 
 trumpet, which includes the seven last vials ; we are now 
 prepared to explain the nature and the action of the first 
 vial. New angelic agencies are obviously employed. The 
 four angels do not come from the circumference of the 
 earth, which would be the symbol of foreign invasion. 
 Their coming forth from the temple habited in pure linen, 
 implies their being sent from the immediate presence of 
 God, and commissioned to execu te special j udgments. The
 
 330 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 fact that one of the four living creatures gives the vials to 
 the angels, in other words, equips them for their missions, 
 seems to indicate that these judgments will be righteous 
 retributions on them that persecuted the saints of other 
 days. The plagues resemble those of Egypt ; Papal Chris- 
 tendom being figuratively Egypt. A vial is the same as 
 the cup of trembling, so frequently alluded to in Scrip- 
 ture. It is obvious, that the localities on which the 
 vials are poured out, the earth, the sea, the rivers, and 
 fountains, are substantially the same as those on which 
 the judgments of the four first trumpets fell. 
 
 The word which is here translated " sore," is used in 
 several passages of Scripture. It is applied to the case 
 of Job, where it is stated, (Job ii. 7,) " Satan smote Job 
 with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown." 
 It is also used to denote the condition of Hezekiah, as 
 well as that of the beggar Lazarus. In all these it is 
 descriptive of very severe disease. Whatever, therefore, 
 be the nature of the visitation inflicted on the earth by 
 the pouring out of the First Vial, it is obvious that it 
 must be some severe and terrible calamity some dread- 
 ful corruption. 
 
 From the name applied to the Roman earth, the 
 alleged place of its descent, " which is spiritually called 
 Egypt," the sore would seem to indicate its having 
 some analogy to the plagues of Egypt. The very same 
 word is applied to the plague-spot of Egypt the 
 most noisome and painful of the judgments that fell 
 upon the subjects of Pharaoh, and one specially noted 
 for its contagious nature. So peculiarly severe and in- 
 fectious was the Egyptian plague, that its name was ap- 
 plied to the most malignant kind. The testimony of 
 heathen writers also confirms the description of holy 
 writ. Thucydides traces the origin of the great Athe- 
 nian plague to Egypt ; and in the Encyclopaedia Bri- 
 tannica, the plague is said " to be generally brought into 
 European Turkey from Egypt." I need not remind you, 
 that this sore is evidently used in the text in a figurative 
 sense, as it has been used in the prophecies of Isaiah, in 
 which he describes the national corruption of his age,
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 331 
 
 " the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint from 
 the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no sound- 
 ness in it ; but Avounds and bruises and putrefying sores." 
 (Isa. i. 6.) This use is also apparent from the figurative 
 sense clearly belonging to the Apocalyptic Egypt. 
 
 The contents of the First Vial were poured out at the 
 French Revolution, 1789. There had been long maturing 
 and gaining head in the social system, partly from the 
 spread of such writings as those of Rousseau, and still 
 more from the immorality and licentiousness of the Papal 
 clergy a corruption too deep and too intense not to find 
 for itself ten thousand vents, in the shape of sores and 
 plague-spots, over the length and breadth not only of 
 France, but of Europe itself. The sarcastic scepticism 
 of Voltaire was followed up by the sensual but brilliant 
 bursts of passion from the pen of Rousseau. D'Alembert, 
 Diderot, and Helvetius laboured hard to write down the 
 existence of God. Crebillon, Laclos, and Louvet turned 
 into captivating fiction the materialism of the Encyclo- 
 paedists ; and the French clergy, the only representatives 
 of Christianity, furnished abundant materials in their 
 superstition unbelief licentiousness and avarice, for a 
 united onslaught on all that wore the Christian name. 
 
 The dreadful fever soon appeared, and infected every 
 order, and rank, and class of the community ; the deadly 
 virus the more deadly because moral shot through 
 every vein, and smote the springs and sources of all 
 virtue all morality. Intense suffering rocked the fever- 
 ed and restless mass, and began to show, to discerning 
 minds, what scorpion stings sin has within itself, and 
 how naturally the guilty become the executioners of their 
 own punishment. Infidelity and Popery combined spread 
 their influences far and wide, till at length the nation 
 which had long been subject to their action broke out 
 into that moral sore here attached to the First Vial. Sir 
 Walter Scott, in his Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, thus 
 describes these roots and sources of this noisome sore : 
 " The licentiousness which Avalked abroad in such dis- 
 gusting and undisguised nakedness, was marked by open 
 infamy, deep enough to have called down, in the age of
 
 332 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 miracles, an immediate judgment from heaven ; and 
 crimes, which the worst of the Roman emperors would 
 have at least hidden in his solitary isle of Caprea, were 
 acted as publicly as if men had no eyes, and God no 
 thunderbolts." (Vol. i. c. 2.) What renders the parallel 
 between a " noisome and grievous sore " and the French 
 revolutionary mania more marked, is the fact that, as 
 the former is not easily detected in the earliest stages, or 
 may be mistaken for a source or symptom of returning 
 health, so the French Revolution was hailed at its first 
 outburst, as the dawn of a new and glorious era ; though, 
 it ought to be observed, the very parties that thus prog- 
 nosticated its glories, lived to retract all they said in its 
 favour. Fox, even after the murder of the King Louis 
 XVI. declared in the British Parliament, " I, for one, 
 admire the new constitution of France, considered alto- 
 gether as the most stupendous and glorious edifice of 
 liberty which has been erected on the foundations of 
 human integrity in any age or country." Bishop Watson 
 looked upon it as the dawn of a new day ; and Dr. Price, 
 a Dissenting minister of that time, applied to it the words 
 of Simeon " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart 
 in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 
 
 But the true character of this " sore" soon showed 
 itself. It was not a symptom of health, but the prelude 
 to corruption the plague-spot of death as the scenes 
 and deeds that followed abundantly proved. By and by 
 we read that Camille Desmoulins harangued the mobs of 
 Paris, and urged a " St. Bartholomew of the patriots." 
 Soon after this, the revolutionary mob laid siege to the 
 royal palace of Versailles ; and finding an avenue, rushed 
 into the royal apartments, and after murdering two of the 
 body-guard, who made the most heroic defence, and 
 by their protracted resistance gave the King and Queen 
 time to escape from the demons who thirsted for their 
 blood, they beheaded the two faithful guards, and carried 
 their heads on pikes through the streets of Versailles. 
 It was on this occasion that the infuriated democrats 
 stabbed the bed from which the Queen had just risen and 
 escaped, thinking she might be concealed beneath it an
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 333 
 
 incident, let me observe, which gave birth to the follow- 
 ing beautiful and touching apostrophe of Burke: "It is 
 now sixteen years since I saw the Queen of France, then 
 the Dauphiness of Versailles, and surely never lighted 
 on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more 
 delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, de- 
 corating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began 
 to move in glittering like the morning star, full of life 
 and splendour and joy. Oh what a revolution ! and what 
 a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that 
 elevation and that fall ! Little did I dream, when she 
 added titles of veneration to that enthusiastic, distant, 
 respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the 
 sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom ! 
 Little did I dream that I should live to see such disasters 
 fall upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of 
 men of honour and cavaliers ! Methought ten thousand 
 swords must have leapt from their scabbards, to avenge 
 even a look that threatened her with insult. But the 
 age of chivalry is gone ! That of sophisters, economists, 
 and calculators has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe 
 is extinguished for ever. Never more shall we behold 
 that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud sub- 
 mission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of 
 the heart, which kept alive even in servitude itself the 
 spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of 
 life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly 
 sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone." 
 
 Even this, however, was but the beginning of the san- 
 guinary outburst. The king was soon after dragged a 
 miserable captive to Paris, surrounded by his wounded and 
 bleeding body-guard, no longer to rule the realm on the 
 throne of which Providence had placed him, but to re- 
 ceive the orders and obey the dictates of the Parisian 
 mob. The people grasped the sceptre, and the sword, and 
 made and executed laws at pleasure ; and the unhappy 
 monarch was now the subject of their merriment, and 
 anon the object of their gross insults. He was shorn of 
 his power, denuded of his royal equipage, and denied the 
 titles conceded to kings by universal consent. In November
 
 334 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 1789, the property of the French Church was confiscated 
 by an act of the National Assembly, and the proceeds 
 were applied chiefly to the national exigencies, and instead, 
 a miserable pension decreed to the various ecclesiastical 
 orders. While we admit that no clergy had more neg- 
 lected the great functions of the ministerial office, or in 
 their day and power exercised a more sanguinary des- 
 potism over all that would not bow beneath the iron cro- 
 sier of the papacy, yet it must not be forgotten that the 
 spoliation and cruelty of which they were the victims 
 was not inflicted by the Jacobins on account of their 
 crimes, which were black and many, but out of antipathy 
 to every thing like the Christian faith. In June 1792, 
 and soon after this, upwards of 30,000 Parisians pro- 
 ceeded from the Assembly towards the palace, displaying 
 banners inscribed with revolutionary sentiments. " At 
 the end of one pike," says Alison, " was placed a bleed- 
 ing heart, with the inscription around it ' The heart of 
 the aristocracy.'" The palace was entered by the mob, 
 the red cap of liberty was placed by force on the king's 
 head, and the venerable monarch was made the sport of 
 the infuriated demons who surrounded him ; ultimately 
 he was iniquitously condemned and executed by his sub- 
 jects in January 1793, and his queen was beheaded in 
 October following. Forthwith began that terrific epoch 
 in the history of the world, when the noisome ulcer at- 
 tained its height, which by universal consent has been 
 called the " reign of terror." It was during this period 
 that the frightful massacres of La Vendee and Lyons 
 were perpetrated, of which I give the accomplished 
 Alison's graphic description (vol. ii. p. 391). 
 
 " A Revolutionary Tribunal was formed there under 
 the direction of Carrier, and it soon outstripped even the 
 rapid march of Danton and Robespierre. ' Their princi- 
 ple,' says the Republican historian, ' was, that it was 
 necessary to destroy en masse all the prisoners. At their 
 command was formed a corps called the Legion of Marat, 
 composed of the most determined and bloodthirsty of the 
 Revolutionists, the members of which were entitled, of 
 their own authority, to incarcerate any person whom they
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 335 
 
 chose. The number of their prisoners was soon between 
 three and four thousand, and they divided among them- 
 selves all their property. Whenever a fresh supply of 
 captives was wanted, the alarm of a counter-revolution, 
 the generate beat, the cannon planted ; and this was im- 
 mediately followed by innumerable arrests. Nor were 
 they long in disposing of the captives. The miserable 
 wretches were either slain with poniards in the prisons, 
 or carried out in a vessel and drowned by wholesale in 
 the Loire. On one occasion, a hundred ' fanatical priests,' 
 as they were termed, were taken out together, stripped 
 of their clothes, and precipitated into the waves. The 
 same vessel served for many of these Noyades ; and the 
 horror expressed by many of the citizens for that mode 
 of execution formed the ground for fresh arrests and in- 
 creased murders. Women, big with child ; infants, eight, 
 nine, and ten years of age, were thrown together into the 
 stream, on the sides of which men, armed with sabres, 
 were placed to cut off their hands, if the waves should 
 throw them undrowned on the shore. The citizens, with 
 loud shrieks, implored the lives of the little innocents, 
 and numbers offered to adopt them as their own ; but 
 though a few were granted to their urgent entreaty, the 
 greater part were doomed to destruction. Thus were 
 consigned to the grave whole generations at once ' the 
 ornament of the present, the hope of the future.' So im- 
 mense were the numbers of those who were cut off by 
 the guillotine or mowed down by fusillades, that three 
 hundred men were occupied for six weeks in covering 
 with earth the vast multitude of corpses which filled the 
 trenches which had been cut in the place of the depart- 
 ment at Nantes to receive the dead bodies. Ten thou- 
 sand died of disease, pestilence, and horror, in the prisons 
 of that department alone. 
 
 " On one occasion, by orders of Carrier, twenty-three 
 of the Royalists, on another twenty-four, were guillotined 
 together, without any trial. The executioner remon- 
 strated, but in vain. Among them were many children 
 of seven or eight years of age, and seven women ; the ex- 
 ecutioner died two or three days after, with horror at 
 what he himself had done. At another time, one hun-
 
 336 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 dred and forty women, incarcerated as suspected, were 
 drowned together, though actively engaged in making 
 bandages and shirts for the Republican soldiers. So 
 great was the multitude of captives who were brought in 
 on all sides, that the executioners, as well as the com- 
 pany of Marat, declared themselves exhausted with fa- 
 tigue ; and a new method of disposing of them was 
 adopted, borrowed from Nero, but improved on the plan 
 of that tyrant. A hundred, or a hundred and fifty vic- 
 tims, for the most part women and children, were crowded 
 together in a boat, with a concealed trap-door in the 
 bottom, which was conducted into the middle of the 
 Loire ; at a signal given, the crew leapt into another 
 boat, the bolts were withdrawn, and the shrieking vic- 
 tims precipitated into the waves, amidst the laughter of 
 the company of Marat, who stood on the banks, to cut 
 down any who approached the shore. This is what Car- 
 rier called his Republican Baptisms. The Republican 
 Marriages were, if possible, a still greater refinement in 
 cruelty. Two persons of different sexes, generally an 
 old man and an old wosaan, or a young man and a young 
 woman, bereft of every species of dress, were bound to- 
 gether, and after being left in torture in that situation 
 for half an hour, thrown into the river. It was ascer- 
 tained, by authenticated documents, that six hundred 
 children had, on one occasion alone, perished by that in- 
 human species of death. The noyades at Nantes alone 
 amounted to twenty-five, on each of which occasions 
 from eighty to a hundred and fifty persons perished ; 
 and such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the 
 Loire, that the water of that river was infected so as to 
 render a public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use 
 of it to the inhabitants. No less than eighteen thousand 
 perished in these ways, or by the guillotine, in Nantes 
 alone, during the administration of Carrier ; and the 
 mariners, when they heaved their anchors, frequently 
 brought up boats charged with corpses. Birds of prey 
 flocked to the shores, and fed on human flesh ; while the 
 very fish became so poisonous, as to induce an order of 
 the municipality of Nantes, prohibiting them to be taken 
 by the fishermen."
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 337 
 
 " The scenes in the prisons which preceded these hor- 
 rid executions exceeded all that romance has figured of 
 the terrible. Many women died of terror, the moment a 
 man entered their cells, conceiving that they were about 
 to be led out to the Noyades ; the floors were covered with 
 the bodies of their infants, numbers of whom were yet 
 quivering in the agonies of death. On one occasion, the 
 inspector entered the prison to seek for a child, where the 
 evening before he had left above three hundred infants ; 
 they were all gone in the morning, having been drowned 
 the preceding night. To every representation of the citi- 
 zens in favour of these innocent victims, Carrier answered, 
 ' They are all vipers ; let them be stifled.' Three hun- 
 dred young women of Nantes were drowned by him in 
 one night ; so far from having had any share in political 
 discussions, they were of the unfortunate class who live 
 by the pleasures of others. Several hundred persons 
 were thrown every night, for some months, into the river : 
 their shrieks at being led out of the entrepot on board 
 the barks, wakened all the inhabitants of the town, and 
 froze every heart with horror. Early in the Noyades, 
 Lambarty, at a party at Carrier's, pointing to the Loire, 
 said, ' It has already passed two thousand eight hundred.' 
 'Yes,' replied Carrier ; ' they are in the national bath.' 
 Fouquet boasted that he had despatched nine thousand in 
 other quarters on the same river. From Saumur to 
 Nantes, a distance of sixty miles, the Loire was, for se- 
 veral weeks, red with human blood ; and the multitude of 
 corpses it bore to the ocean so prodigious, that the adja- 
 cent coast was strewed with them, when a violent west 
 wind and high tide having brought part of them back to 
 Nantes, followed by a train of sharks and marine animals 
 of prey, attracted by so prodigious an accumulation of 
 human bodies, they were thrown ashore in vast numbers. 
 Fifteen thousand persons perished there under the hands 
 of the executioner, or of diseases in prison, in one month ; 
 the total victims of the Reign of Terror at that place 
 exceeded thirty thousand. 
 
 " The spectacles of horror which ensued when the re- 
 fluence of the tide and the force of the west wind brought
 
 338 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the corpses in numbers back to Nantes, were of the most 
 appalling description. Crowds of the peasants hastened 
 from the adjoining country, in the pious hope of 
 recovering the body of a dear and lost relative from the 
 waves, and giving it a decent sepulture ; but though they 
 in some instances were successful, yet it was only with 
 great difficulty, and often after a severe contest with the 
 monsters of the deep. Huge sea-snakes and enormous 
 eels twenty or thirty feet long, fierce sharks and other 
 marine animals of prey, followed the blood-stained waves, 
 and contended with vultures and ospreys for the mangled 
 corpses with which they were charged. Inexpressible 
 were the scenes of tenderness which these piteous remains 
 brought to light. Children were found with their lips 
 affixed to those of their dead mothers, locked in so close an 
 embrace, that even the struggles of drowning and the 
 action of the waves had been unable to separate them. 
 Mothers with their infants yet at the breast were found 
 floating together in the waves. Often a voracious fish 
 had eaten out the entrails of the young infant without 
 being able to dissolve the close embrace ; and the dead 
 remains, yet locked in each other's arms, were disputed 
 fiercely by a shark and a vulture, each striving for the 
 tender spoil." (Alison's French Revolution, vol. ii. pp. 
 391396.) 
 
 After having thus exhibited their terrible hatred to all 
 order and all human sympathy, after having murdered their 
 king on earth, and overturned the throne, they resolved 
 next, if possible, to dethrone the King of heaven ; and 
 in their mad attempts, they reached a height of blasphemy 
 and atrocity so unparalleled, that were Revelation silent, 
 Reason would pronounce it some awful epoch some 
 unnatural eclipse of all moral light some fell extinc- 
 tion of all human sympathies. I quote again from 
 Alison : 
 
 " Having massacred the great of the present, and 
 insulted the illustrious of former ages, nothing remained 
 "to the Revolutionists but to direct their vengeance 
 against Heaven itself. Fouche, Hebert, and Chaumette, 
 the leaders of the municipality, publicly expressed their
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 339 
 
 determination ' to dethrone the King of heaven, as well 
 as the monarchs of the earth.' To accomplish this 
 design, they prevailed on Gobel, the apostate constitu- 
 tional bishop of Paris, to appear at the bar of the assem- 
 bly, accompanied by some of the clergy of his diocese, 
 and there abjure the Christian faith. He declared 'that 
 no other national religion was now required but that of 
 liberty, equality, and morality.' Many of the constitu- 
 tional bishops and clergy present joined in the propo- 
 sition. The Convention received them with loud 
 applause and gave them the fraternal kiss. Crowds of 
 drunken artisans and shameless prostitutes crowded to 
 the bar, and trampled under their feet the sacred vases, 
 consecrated for ages to the holiest purposes of religion. 
 The sections of Paris shortly after followed the example 
 of the constitutional clergy, and publicly abjured the 
 Christian religion. The churches were stripped of all 
 their ornaments ; their plate and valuable contents 
 brought in heaps to the municipality and the Convention, 
 from whence they were sent to the mint to be melted 
 down. Trampling under foot the images of our Saviour 
 and the Virgin, they elevated, amidst shouts of applause, 
 the busts of Marat and Leppelletier, and danced round 
 them, singing parodies on the Hallelujah, and dancing 
 the Carmagnole. Momoro, the printer, an ardent mem- 
 ber of the municipality, then said ' Citizen representa- 
 tives, you see before you your brothers, who desire to be 
 regenerated, and to become men. You see the bishops 
 of Paris, the grand vicars, and some of the priests, who, 
 conducted by reason, come to lay aside the character 
 which superstition had given them ; that great example 
 will be imitated by their colleagues. It is thus that the 
 minions of despotism concur in its destruction : it is 
 thus that soon the French Republic will recognise no 
 other worship but that of liberty, equality, and eternal 
 truth, which, thanks to your immortal labours, will soon 
 become universal.' During several weeks, daily abjura- 
 tions by the constitutional clergy took place at the bar 
 of the Convention. On the 10th November, Si eyes 
 appeared, and abjured like the rest. 'I have lived,' said 
 z 2
 
 340 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 he, ' the victim of superstition. I will not be its slave. 
 I know no other worship but that of liberty ; no other 
 religion but the love of humanity and country.' 
 
 " Shortly after, a still more indecent exhibition took 
 place before the Assembly. The celebrated prophecy of 
 Father Beauregard was accomplished ' Beauty without 
 modesty was seen usurping the place of the Holy of 
 Holies ! ' Hebert, Chaumette, and their associates ap- 
 peared at the bar and declared that ' God did not exist, 
 and that the worship of Reason was to be substituted in 
 his stead.' Chaumette said ' Legislative fanaticism has 
 lost its hold ; it has given place to reason. Its dark 
 eyes could not bear the light of reason. We have left 
 its temples ; they are regenerated. To-day an immense 
 multitude are assembled under its Gothic roofs, which 
 for the first time will re-echo the voice of truth. There 
 the French will celebrate their true worship that of 
 liberty and reason. There we will form new vows 
 for the prosperity of the armies of the Republic : there 
 will we abandon the worship of inanimate idols, for that 
 of Reason, this animated image, the chef-d'oeuvre of 
 creation.' A veiled female, arrayed in blue drapery, 
 was brought into the Assembly ; and Chaumette, taking 
 her by the hand ' Mortals,' said he, ' cease to tremble 
 before the powerless thunders of a God whom your 
 fears have created. Henceforth acknowledge no divinity 
 but Reason. I offer you its noblest and purest image : 
 if you must have idols, sacrifice only to such idols as 
 this.' When, letting fall the veil, he exclaimed, 'Fall 
 before the august Senate of Freedom, O Veil of Reason ! ' 
 At the same time the goddess appeared personified by 
 a celebrated beauty, Madame Maillard of the opera, 
 known in more than one character to most of the Con- 
 vention. The goddess, after being embraced by the 
 president, was mounted on a magnificent car, and con- 
 ducted amidst an immense crowd to the cathedral 
 of Notre-Dame, to take the place of the Deity. 
 There she was elevated on the high altar, and received 
 the adoration of all present ; while a numerous band 
 of elegant young women, all figurantes of the opera,
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 341 
 
 her attendants, whose alluring looks already sufficiently 
 indicated their profession, retired into the chapels round 
 the choir, where every species of licentiousness and ob- 
 scenity was indulged in without control, with hardly any 
 veil from the public gaze. To such a length was this 
 carried, that Robespierre afterwards declared that Chau- 
 mette deserved death for the abominations he had per- 
 mitted on that occasion. Thenceforward that ancient 
 edifice was called the Temple of Reason." (Alison's 
 " French Revolution," vol. ii. pp. 597600.) 
 
 Morality of every kind perished before this terrible 
 simoom. The feelings of nature and the ties of grace 
 were burnt up. Nor did France alone suffer. The 
 Apocalyptic sore, after covering France, extended its 
 baleful contagion throughout Europe, and infected the 
 remotest countries. It spread with extraordinary rapid- 
 ity throughout the Papal kingdoms. Italy, Germany, 
 Belgium, Spain, Holland, were all tainted to the core ; 
 all in turn broke out. England was touched ; but her 
 possession of the Bible, and a pure faith, repelled and 
 neutralized the poison ; thereby demonstrating to states- 
 men, that it is neither army nor navy, nor Acts of Par- 
 liament, that are a country's strength and defence, but a 
 pure faith and a Christian people ; for where these are, 
 there God is also a Shield and Sun. Fearful blas- 
 phemy cruelty incapable of being satiated crime the 
 way to power, and power the platform of crime what- 
 ever debases, and degrades, and defiles were the very 
 air the people breathed. " These men," said Sir Walter 
 Scott, " belonged to that class of atheists who, looking 
 up towards heaven, loudly and literally defied the Deity 
 to make his existence known by launching his thunder- 
 bolts." One of them entered the church of St. Roque, 
 and cried aloud, " God, if you exist, avenge your injured 
 name. I bid you defiance. Who, after this, will be- 
 lieve your existence ? " Had the wretched blasphemer 
 been acquainted with his New Testament, he might 
 have learned that his was not the first attempt of the 
 kind. It was said to the Saviour on the cross, " If 
 thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross."
 
 342 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 The mercy of God is greater than the malice of men, and 
 is not measured out according to our demerits. God 
 does not work a miracle to please fools. " It Avas to 
 such men as these," says Sir Walter, " that Heaven, in 
 punishment of the sins of France and of Europe, and 
 perhaps to teach mankind a dreadful lesson, abandoned 
 the management of the French Revolution." (Scott's 
 " Napoleon," vol. ii. p. 61.) 
 
 Mr. Elliott, in his " Horge Apocalyptic*," has collected 
 the epithets bestowed on this dreadful Revolution by dis- 
 tinguished contemporaneous writers, who never dreamed 
 of connecting it in any way with the Book of Revelation ; 
 and has thereby shown that the Apocalyptic symbol is 
 so just, that it occurred to the master-spirits of the last 
 century. Burke, the most eloquent orator of the day, 
 called it, " the fever of Jacobinism," " the epidemic of 
 atheistical fanaticism," " an evil lying deep in the cor- 
 ruptions of human nature," " the malignant French 
 distemper," " such a plague, that the precaution of the 
 most severe quarantine ought to be established against 
 it." The result was " the corruption of all morals," 
 " the decomposition of all society " genius thus unin- 
 tentionally attesting the truth of Revelation. 
 
 Such, it seems to the best and most judicious inter- 
 preters of prophecy, is the fulfilment of the First Vial 
 the field, the spread, and the blighting effects of its 
 awful contents. It was during this terrific era, that 
 " the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint : 
 from the sole of the foot even unto the head there was no 
 soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying 
 sores." 
 
 From this awful era many salutary lessons may be 
 learned. Among these we cannot fail to note the utter in- 
 efficiency and worthlessness of every claim, assumption, or 
 privilege, or power, on the part of a Church without the 
 gospel. Never was this more powerfully demonstrated 
 than during the action of this Vial. The French clergy 
 had monopolized a large share of the wealth of France. 
 They claimed to be the only body who were arrayed 
 with awful and mysterious attributes: they professed
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 343 
 
 to carry at their girdles the keys of the kingdom of God ; 
 being, as they alleged, at once the representatives of 
 heaven, and the imperially recognised of earth. They 
 were placed in the midst of outward circumstances the 
 most powerfully calculated to conciliate the awe and 
 reverence of the people. But they neither knew nor 
 preached the words of everlasting life ; and therefore 
 failed to attract, either to themselves, or to the faith of 
 which they professed to be the ministers, the affections 
 or veneration of the people. " By their fruits ye shall 
 know them," is a test which mankind universally defer 
 to. No name, however august no pretensions, however 
 sacred no lineage, however ancient can cover with 
 glory, or conceal from execration, an unfaithful, an un- 
 holy clergy. A national Church, with a spiritually- 
 minded and devoted ministry, needs few arguments in 
 its defence ; and without such a ministry, all the elo- 
 quence of a Demosthenes, and all the patronage of princes, 
 cannot shield it. It is the gospel alone that is the wisdom 
 of God and the power of God. In its faithful truths are 
 treasured up the prosperity of nations, the happiness of 
 individuals, the stability of thrones, and the allegiance 
 of subjects. Its minister will be most respected where 
 he is most faithful : the people will love him in propor- 
 tion as they are led to love God. The surest way of 
 supporting the altar, is to turn the hearts of the people 
 to the glory that burns on it. The casket will be valued 
 only for the jewel's sake. That church will have the 
 greatest hold of the affections of the people, which has 
 most largely and successfully diffused among their families 
 the sanctifying and transforming truths of the gospel. 
 
 We learn from this outburst the awful responsibility 
 attached to the Romish priesthood. They had not only 
 neglected to teach the lessons of Christianity, but they 
 had inculcated principles in every way calculated to un- 
 dermine the very first principles of morality. Mr. 
 Elliott quotes some specimens of the principles taught by 
 the Jesuits previously to the French Revolution, which 
 alone were fitted to originate, or vindicate, some of its 
 most dreadful excesses. One of these is, " that trans-
 
 344 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 gressions committed by a person blinded by the seduction 
 of lust, agitated by the impulse of tumultuous passions, 
 and destitute of all sense and impression of religion, how- 
 ever detestable and heinous in themselves, are not im- 
 putable to the transgressor before the tribunal of God." 
 And again : " that those persons may transgress with 
 safety, who have a probable reason for transgressing." 
 The distinctions recognised between venial and mortal 
 sins the practice of confession the assumed power of 
 absolution on the part of the priest the doctrine of pur- 
 gatory, and many other analogous tenets cannot but 
 sap the very bulwarks of moral obligation, and generate, 
 wherever they are taught, wide-spread corruption. 
 
 These principles, however, had long been diligently 
 inculcated by the Romish Jesuits ; and if the Revolu- 
 tionists availed themselves of their sanction, it was no 
 more than might have been anticipated. The Romish 
 Church undermined the foundations of morality ; and if 
 the superstructure fell, and crushed her in the ruin, it 
 was the catastrophe she had too faithfully precipitated, 
 and for which she was peculiarly responsible in the sight 
 of God. It remains yet to be seen how intimately Popery 
 and Infidelity are connected how truly the one plays 
 into the hands and prepares the pathway of the other. 
 Certain it is, that the French people had no conception 
 of the Christian faith, except in the shape of the Romish 
 worship, and in the personation of the Romish priests ; 
 and when such a caricature of the truth is presented to 
 honest and inquiring minds, it is difficult to say whether 
 it may not be more praiseworthy to reject than to em- 
 brace it. It is the guilt, the fearful guilt, of the Popish 
 priesthood, that they made the very name of Jesus con- 
 temptible, by making Christianity a defence of sin. A 
 Christian, travelling through France, saw, one day, a 
 statue of the Redeemer clothed in the robes of a Jesuit, 
 and, with great truth, he wrote on the pedestal what 
 might be written on the whole Romish faith : " Thus, 
 blessed Jesus, have they arrayed tliee, lest any one should 
 love thee." 
 
 The Papal Church had also taught the principle since
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 345 
 
 the Reformation, that sovereignty resides in the people. 
 Prior to the sixteenth century, the priests advocated abso- 
 lute and unquestioning obedience to the king, just because 
 the king was taught absolute obedience to the Church : 
 but after the Reformation, when the German princes 
 renounced the Pope, and declared their conversion to 
 the Protestant faith, and Elizabeth of England repudiated 
 all connexion with the see of Rome, and successive 
 members of the royal family of France espoused the 
 cause of the Huguenots, the Papal court changed its 
 tactics. The Doctors of the Sorbonne affirmed that the 
 people were the rightful possessors of the sovereign 
 power ; and that they might dethrone, and if need be 
 decapitate, their king. Regicide doctrines are not only 
 held, but are still popular with the Jesuits. Pope 
 Sixtus lauded the murderer of Henry III. of France ; 
 and Mariana, the Jesuit, thus praises the regicide monk 
 who killed the king : " Jacobus Clemens, casso rege, 
 ingens sibi nomen fecit." Bellarmine, the great champion 
 of the Church of Rome, advocates the same principles. 
 It is, in fact, characteristic of the Papal Church, to make 
 use of whatever instrumentality most effectually promotes 
 its purposes. Despotism and democracy are of them- 
 selves equally good in her estimate. That is preferred 
 which ministers most directly to her supremacy. The 
 independence or supremacy of the Church is her first 
 principle : whatever enthrones and promotes it is good : 
 whatever intrudes on it is anathema. 
 
 In the judgments which this Vial emptied on the French 
 clergy, we see also the proofs of a retributive Providence. 
 The French priests had dyed their hands in blood in 
 the day of their power. The massacres of the Albigenses 
 and Waldenses, and the terrible murders of St. Bartho- 
 lomew's day, when 60,000 Protestants were butchered at 
 the instigation of the Popish clergy in twenty-four hours 
 the reigning Pontiff causing a medal to be struck, to 
 commemorate the carnage a medal which I have seen 
 all came into remembrance in 1793. The leaders of the 
 Revolution, in fact, quoted Bartholomew's day as a 
 precedent. Persecution, as if experience taught no im-
 
 346 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 provements, is still cherished in the Papal Church, and is 
 ready to break forth whenever there is the power. Its 
 past history is written in blood. Fouchet, and Collert 
 d' Herbois, and Marat, were not worse than the Hilde- 
 brands of the Romish Church. They were less guilty, 
 for they were less enlightened. 
 
 Let us not suppose there is any thing in the French 
 character essentially worse than in our own. Had Eng- 
 land been the scene of this horrible judgment, and her 
 people schooled in no purer principles in no sublimer 
 faith, they had just developed the same excesses. Popery 
 would pluck a seraph from his throne, and plunge him 
 in the depths of hell. Angels surrendered to them- 
 selves, and severed from God, would soon show them- 
 selves only demons. The gospel of grace makes all the 
 difference. We had no national sympathy with Rome in 
 1789, and not partaking of her sins, we received not her 
 plagues. 
 
 Let us love the blessed gospel more and more ; let us 
 think less of those trivial disputes, which in an age of 
 privilege are liable to stir the passions of mankind ; and 
 contemplate with intenser gratitude, and cherish with 
 more ardent and enthusiastic feelings, those precious 
 truths which are the roots of our prosperity. The 
 unclean spirits are at work the last struggle is ap- 
 proaching. They only who are born again will endure ; 
 all others shall be as chaff before the whirlwind, or 
 stubble in the devouring flames. Are we Christians ? 
 Has the gospel touched our hearts, and transformed our 
 nature ? has it quickened us with divine life ? 
 
 Let us spread far and wide that blessed volume which 
 embosoms the embryo of Eden, and out of which the 
 millennial glories are destined to break in all their 
 splendours. Let us help forward that gospel which is 
 the cement of society, the sweetener of life, the fore-light 
 of heaven. In proportion as nations become Christian 
 will they be happy. 
 
 True religion is the only cement and sweetener of 
 society, and Avhen it shall wrap our country like its 
 atmosphere, and mould and shape the whole social
 
 THE FIRST VIAL. 347 
 
 economy, neither the tyrant's rod shall scourge us, nor 
 the trumpet of sedition agitate it. There shall be no en- 
 chantment against Jacob, nor divination against Israel : 
 when God shall be recognised as our Lawgiver and our 
 King when God shall be known in all our palaces, our 
 condition will be one of increasing greatness, and our 
 progress of uneclipsed and augmenting splendour. 
 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, will 
 Great Britain be. The kings of the earth, as they as- 
 semble to contemplate us and pass by together, will 
 wonder, and be troubled, and haste away : and the wise 
 and holy of the earth will come from afar and walk 
 about our nation, and go round about her and tell the 
 towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks, and con- 
 sider her palaces, that they may tell it to generations 
 following.
 
 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 
 
 " And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea ; and it 
 became as the blood of a dead man : and every living soul died 
 in the sea. 
 
 " And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and foun- 
 tains of waters ; and they became blood. 
 
 " And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O 
 Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast 
 judged thus. 
 
 " For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou 
 hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. 
 
 " And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God 
 Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments. 
 
 " And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun ; and 
 power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. 
 
 " And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the 
 name of God, which hath power over these plagues : and they 
 repented not to give him glory." REV. xvi. 3 9. 
 
 I NEED scarcely here refer to one great design which 
 has guided and actuated me in all these expositions, viz. 
 to show that what the pen of God has written upon the 
 sacred page, the hand of God is performing every day in 
 providence : in other words, that facts in providence are 
 the most brilliant comments upon texts in Scripture ; that 
 God is not confined to the Bible, but that he is in the 
 world : God is in creation ; his creative power is felt 
 there : God is in providence ; his superintending presence 
 is exhibited there : God is in the Bible ; his mercy and 
 his truth are most vividly illustrated there : and to unfold 
 the harmony of all, by pointing out the coincidence of the 
 facts of all, is one of the great duties of an instructor of 
 the people, and not the least precious lesson that a 
 Christian people can learn. It is one predominating tend- 
 ency of the age, to believe that God is in the temple, 
 but not in the Royal Exchange ; that God is in our con-
 
 THE SECOND, TII1KD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 349 
 
 gregations, but not in our armies ; that God takes cog- 
 nizance of ministers and Christian communicants, but 
 that his voice is not heard, nor his arm felt, in our pa- 
 laces, our parliaments, our halls of commerce, and all that 
 constitutes our existence as a nation. The fact is, there 
 is a disposition to give God a portion of the earth, and to 
 keep the rest ; so much for mammon so much for am- 
 bition so much for power and so much for sin : to let 
 a certain portion of the earth be consecrated as the acre 
 of God, and to insist on the remainder being reserved for 
 man. The consecration of churches is thus capable I 
 do not say necessarily so of being misconstrued, as if it 
 implied that the rest of the earth was not for God. I 
 believe that when the Lord of glory assumed to himself 
 a portion of our clay, he consecrated, by that fact, every 
 acre of the habitable globe. And, if so, there is no por- 
 tion so unholy that a Christian's knee may not bow there ; 
 there is no portion of it so unsanctified that the ear of 
 the God that formed it cannot hear us. How often have 
 I repeated, what is worth repetition for the way to 
 teach is to repeat this great lesson : it is the work that 
 consecrates the place, not the place that consecrates the 
 work. If this vast auditory were assembled in Covent 
 Garden Theatre in the name of Christ, it would be a 
 congregation of the Lord : it would, I confess, delight and 
 refresh me to hear, where the language of fiction has so 
 long prevailed, the words of truth and reality resounding 
 in men's ears. 
 
 In order, however, to explain clearly and consistently 
 with all that I have said, the allusions contained in the 
 verses which I have selected for my text, let me remind 
 you of the language almost similar in tone, though not the 
 same in degree, in what were called the Trumpets. You 
 remember that when the first angel sounded his trumpet, 
 there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and a 
 third part of trees were burned up : when the second 
 angel sounded, a great mountain burning with fire was 
 cast into the sea, and a third part of the sea became 
 blood ; and the third part of the creatures which were in 
 the sea and had life died ; and the third part of the ships
 
 350 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 were destroyed. And when the third angel sounded, 
 there fell a great star from heaven ; and it fell upon the 
 third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters. 
 And the name of the star is Wormwood ; and the third 
 part of the waters became wormwood : and many men 
 died of the waters, because they were made bitter. Then 
 the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun 
 was smitten, and the third part of the moon. So that lan- 
 guage perfectly parallel in imagery, though different in 
 degree, and limited to a third part, is used on the sound- 
 ing of the trumpets, to that which is used on the pour- 
 ing out of the second, the third, and the fourth vials. 
 The reason I refer to the action of these symbols, the 
 trumpets, is to show you the perfect consistency of our 
 exposition of the Apocalypse, by showing that the local- 
 ities that were smitten by the woes pronounced by the 
 trumpets, are the very localities exactly that were smitten 
 more terribly by the woes poured forth from the Apo- 
 calyptic vials. Under the second trumpet, then, we have 
 read that, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire 
 was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea be- 
 came blood : you will recollect I explained that to mean 
 that the third part of the maritime power, the naval 
 power, and commercial greatness of the apostate Roman 
 empire, was smitten at the time when the blast of the 
 third trumpet was heard, and that the judgments which 
 that blast conveyed fell upon them : if I Avas right in 
 interpreting the action of the third trumpet, as affecting 
 the maritime and co'mmercial power of the western Ro- 
 man empire, in order to be consistent I must presume 
 that the second vial has its action restricted to the very 
 same thing, namely, to the maritime power, the com- 
 merce and the colonies, of the great Papal countries Avhich 
 had colonies and commerce, namely, France, Spain, and 
 Portugal, and that these were blasted or destroyed at 
 the pouring out of the second vial. 
 
 Last Sunday evening you recollect I endeavoured to 
 show you that the noisome sore bursting forth from 
 within and spreading over the body, irritating and full 
 of disease, was chronologically fixed, and symbolically
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 351 
 
 explained, to be the French Revolution. I have now to 
 show you that the second vial following after it, is the 
 action of the same revolutionary and infidel spirit, de- 
 scending, in some shape, upon the maritime power, com- 
 merce, and colonies of France and Spain and Portugal. 
 England, the great bulwark of Protestantism, was selected 
 to be the instrument the hand that took the vials from 
 God, and poured out their contents upon the maritime 
 forces, colonies, and dependencies of the Papal empire. 
 
 To show that the revolutionary spirit, which includes 
 the contents of the second vial, fell upon the maritime pro- 
 vinces and colonies of France, I refer to what took place 
 at the very commencement of the French Revolution. No 
 sooner had the red cap been hoisted by the populace, and 
 the tree of liberty, as it was called, surely called so in 
 mockery, been planted in the midst of Paris, than the 
 French in St. Domingo, the most populous and flourish- 
 ing colony of France, caught the contagion of the revolu- 
 tionary spirit, unfurled the tricolour, planted the tree of 
 liberty proclaimed liberty and equality through all the 
 island, but with one of those accompaniments which make 
 almost ridiculous some of the efforts of man, for whilst 
 they proclaimed the equality of the whole human race, 
 and freedom and equal rights for all, they made, as our 
 American brethren seem disposed to make still, the excep- 
 tion of the black population of the island. Strange incon- 
 sistency ! to pronounce the equality of all in words, and in 
 deeds to contradict it to make a little shade upon the inner 
 skin so grievous a defect, that whoever had the least tinge 
 of African blood in his veins, or the least remains of 
 African sun upon his face, should not have a right to be 
 considered the equal of the rest of the inhabitants of the 
 island. The blacks, however, had the good sense to see 
 that if the tree of liberty could give shadow to the white, 
 it ought not to withhold its shadow from the black ; and 
 if its fruit were good for one, it could not be bad for the 
 other ; and they insisted on being free too. The French 
 revolutionists, the advocates of liberty and equality, pro- 
 tested against this : conflict therefore began, and that san- 
 guinary servile war was carried on for years, in the course
 
 352 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of which 60,000 blacks were slaughtered, the French 
 ultimately driven from their choicest colonial dependency, 
 and the island of Saint Domingo erected into the negro 
 republic of Hayti. Thus the French, in the loss of one 
 of their first and most productive colonial possessions, 
 felt the first sprinklings of that vial upon their maritime 
 dependencies throughout the world. Immediately after 
 this, still further to illustrate the outpouring of the same 
 vial upon the sea, and upon the maritime dependencies 
 of France, we shall see recorded a series of naval battles, 
 the most disastrous to France that history has recorded. 
 Recollect the vial was to be upon the sea, including the 
 isles, colonies, and dependencies of the Papal nations : 
 and again, it was to be poured out partly by the British 
 nation, whose hand received the vial as the cup of retri- 
 butive judgment upon the Papal nations. We read, then, 
 that the naval war between England and France began in 
 
 1793 with the pouring out of the second vial, and ended 
 with its dregs in 1815. In 1793 the French fleet was 
 almost utterly destroyed by Lord Hood, near Toulon. In 
 
 1794 Lord Howe gained a signal victory over the French 
 off Ushant, which was followed by the capture of nearly 
 all the Spanish, French, and West Indian islands. In 
 
 1795 Lord Bridport gained a naval victory and captured 
 from the French the Cape of Good Hope. In 1797 was 
 gained a victory over the Spanish fleet a very memorable 
 one in history off Cape St. Vincent. Then followed Lord 
 Nelson's memorable victory of the Nile, in 1798 : Copen- 
 hagen was fought in 1801, and Trafalgar in 1805 ; form- 
 ing a series of successful naval battles gained by Britain, 
 and most disastrous to France. In the course of these 
 naval battles, the French and Spanish nations lost 200 
 ships of the line, 400 frigates, and a vast number of smaller 
 vessels. And you will notice the extent and depth of the 
 disaster which I have recapitulated when I tell you, that 
 after his most brilliant victories victories so brilliant that 
 they seemed to be achieved almost by a supernatural power 
 Napoleon uttered constantly the cry, " Give me ships, 
 and colonies, and commerce;" and ever as he made an ap- 
 proximation to his object a higher power swept away his
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 353 
 
 ships, colonies, and commerce. The sea was literally 
 swept by the victorious fleets of Britain, and every effort 
 made by France, or Spain, or Italy, to intercept the de- 
 scending judgment was crushed. By and by, Mexico, 
 Chili, and Peru, the Spanish colonies, imitating St. Do- 
 mingo, blazed with the flames of revolutionary war. In 
 that memorable war, France lost her best colonies 
 Spain her dependencies their fleets were annihilated 
 their naval powers paralyzed, and, truly is it said, every 
 creature that was in the sea and had life died ; and the 
 whole presented the evidence of the action of the vial 
 which we have read. 
 
 I turn, in the next place, to the third angel pouring 
 out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and 
 they became blood. This must be explained by a refer- 
 ence again to the third trumpet. When the third trum- 
 pet sounded, a burning star fell from heaven upon the 
 third part of the rivers and the fountains of waters, and 
 they became wormwood, and men died of them. I ex- 
 plained this to denote the wars and sanguinary victories 
 of Attila the Hun, pouring down his forces along the 
 Danube, the Rhine, the Po, and their tributaries, and 
 staining with blood every capital and city and plain on 
 the banks of these rivers. I consistently assume the 
 same locality for the action of the third vial, and draw 
 the inference that this vial poured out upon the foun- 
 tains of waters and upon the rivers, denotes the action 
 of this great revolutionary power, which I depicted last 
 Sunday evening, upon the cities and towns and countries 
 on the banks of these rivers, the Danube, the Po, the 
 Rhine, and their several tributaries. Let us then appeal 
 to history for the comment on the chapter. Let us read 
 the judgments, not in the language of the symbol as con- 
 tained in the Apocalypse, but in the language of fact, as 
 we extract these facts from history. 
 
 In 1792 war was declared by the French National 
 Assembly against the German Empire, and, immediately 
 after, against the King of Sardinia : the French and the 
 Austrians fought at Worms, at Mentz, and at Spires, and 
 on the banks of the Meuse, a tributary of the Rhine ; 
 2 A
 
 354 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 a second French army marched into Savoy and Piedmont, 
 and, in 1794-5, the middle Rhine was one fearful scene 
 of carnage and of bloodshed : in 1796 Buonaparte 
 marched against Sardinia and the Austrians, and stained 
 the Alpine rivers on which these nations bordered with 
 blood. Successively the Bormida, the Tanaro, and the 
 Adda, with its memorable bridge of Lodi, of which you 
 must all have read, and the Adige, and the Mincio, were 
 fields of battle ; and, literally, the Alpine fountains and 
 rivers were turned into blood, and, as if to identify the 
 scenes on which the judgments of the third vial fell, 
 with those in which the judgments of the third trumpet 
 took place, Napoleon unconsciously remarked, " I will 
 prove another Attila to Venice." In 1799 Suwarrow 
 swept the districts bordering on the Danube, the Rhine, 
 and the Po. In 1800 these scenes were again visited by 
 Napoleon, and the memorable battle of Marengo was 
 fought. The tide of war under Moreau rolled towards the 
 Danube, and the sanguinary battle of Hohenlinden, fought 
 on the Iser, a tributary of the Danube, took place : 
 
 " When shook the hills, by thunder riven; 
 When rush'd the steed to battle driven ; 
 And, louder than the bolts of heaven, 
 
 Farflash'dthe red artillery." 
 
 In 1805 the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought 
 likewise upon a tributary of the Danube the Republic 
 of Venice was extinguished the King of Naples was 
 compelled to pay tribute. Never, in short, in the history 
 of the nations of Europe, were there more sanguinary 
 scenes on the valleys of the Rhine, the Danube, and the 
 Po, than at this memorable era at which we have now 
 arrived there was not an acre on the banks of those 
 rivers that was not furrowed with a soldier's grave 
 scarcely a river or tributary stream that rolled to the 
 main that was not tinged with a soldier's blood nor was 
 there a forest, nor a wood, nor a capital, nor scarcely a 
 cottage, that was not ploughed by the wheels and torn 
 by the shot of the most terrible artillery that was ever 
 dragged into international warfare ; these being the ful-
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 355 
 
 filment of the prediction that the nations upon whom the 
 contents of the second vial were poured should thus suf- 
 fer. But it is added here, immediately after this had 
 taken place, " Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art 
 and wast and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus ;" 
 and then the reason is assigned, " for they," i. e. these 
 nations, " have shed the blood of thy saints and prophets, 
 and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are 
 worthy. And I heard another out of the altar say, 
 Even so, O Lord, true and righteous are thy judgments." 
 Now this song, which is appended thus to the pouring 
 out of the third vial, teaches us that these sanguinary 
 battles these terrible judgments, were not accidents 
 as indeed less things are not but that they were, what 
 they are here pronounced to be, the retributive judg- 
 ments of God upon a guilty people. To show you that 
 these people, thus visited, were specially guilty, I need 
 merely remind you of the cruelty of the French to the 
 Waldenses, prior to the Reformation, and of their yet 
 greater cruelty to the Huguenots, the descendants of the 
 Waldenses, subsequent to that period. I need not re- 
 mind you of the cruelties of the Kings of Piedmont and 
 the Dukes of Savoy to the Vaudois, in the 13th and 
 14th centuries. I need not tell you of the barbarity 
 and proscription exercised by the house of Austria 
 against the Hussites and the Lutherans whenever it had 
 the power. So that Alison himself, that great historian, 
 from whose pages these facts are extracted, struck by 
 the nature and peculiarity of these judgments, says, 
 " The impartial justice of Providence made that terrific 
 period the means of punishing the national sins of the 
 contending parties ;" and strange to say, if you will 
 read the history of these battles, and mark the places 
 where they were fought, you will find that every spot on 
 which a Frenchman, a Spaniard, or an Austrian suf- 
 fered, was the spot on which the same race triumphed 
 as murderers, and the Protestants or witnesses were 
 smitten down as martyrs. Thus true it is that national 
 sins will ever, in the retributive providence of God, be 
 followed by national judgments. 
 2 A 2
 
 356 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 The next vial to which I must turn your attention is 
 the fourth, which contains another act in this awful and 
 stirring drama ; it is in these words " And the fourth 
 angel poured out his vial upon the sun, and power was 
 given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men 
 were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name 
 of God, which hath power over these plagues : and they 
 repented not to give Him glory." Now again, I would 
 refer to the language used when describing the fourth 
 trumpet. There it is said, the fourth angel sounded, 
 and the third part of the sun, and of the moon, and of 
 the stars were darkened. You will recollect Avhat I 
 explained this to mean. I stated that the sun, the moon, 
 and the stars meant, as we have understood them 
 throughout our exposition of the Apocalypse, the civil 
 powers the reigning civil powers. I showed you that 
 Odoacer the Goth, when he marched to Rome, com- 
 manded Augustulus, the last emperor of Rome, to abdi- 
 cate the throne, and to retire into private life ; and then 
 and there I showed you was the fulfilment of the fourth 
 trumpet, that the sun and moon should be darkened. 
 Now then, in the sequel of the history of the French 
 Revolution, which comprehends the time and the facts 
 of the contents of these vials, do we find any thing 
 which explains the darkening of the sovereign and 
 imperial sun, moon, and stars throughout the papal 
 empires ? We have only again to open the page of 
 history, and we shall soon find that the facts of the 
 annalist are the comments on the text of St. John. 
 We read, first of all, that the King of Sardinia was ex- 
 tinguished by Napoleon. I wish your attention parti- 
 cularly to the following fact, as it coincides exactly 
 with the same incident which took place on the sounding 
 of the fourth trumpet. After the battle of Austerlitz, 
 Napoleon compelled the Emperor of Germany to re- 
 nounce his title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Em- 
 pire, which he had held for a thousand years, ever 
 since the days of Charlemagne ; and thus the imperial 
 sun of Christendom was literally extinguished at the 
 bidding of Napoleon. Soon afterwards, the power of
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 357 
 
 Prussia was overthrown at the battle of Jena, and half 
 the dominions of its king was swept away : and Napo- 
 leon showed himself the most complete creator and ex- 
 tinguisher of political suns and stars that ever appeared 
 in the history of Europe ; for at that very time, and 
 during the days of this vial, his brother Jerome was 
 made king of Westphalia his brother Louis was made 
 king of Holland his brother Joseph was made king of 
 Spain his general, Murat, was made king of Naples 
 ancient dynasties were overthrown new ones were 
 created; and between 1806 and 1818, the period com- 
 prehending the pouring out of the fourth vial, more 
 kings were made and unmade than ever in the whole 
 history of Christendom before. And, at last, the Em- 
 peror of Austria, after the most desperate efforts to clear 
 off the eclipse that covered the imperial sun, was obliged 
 to yield at the celebrated battle of Wagram. The Em- 
 peror purchased a momentary respite by giving his own 
 daughter in marriage to Napoleon, who dictated the 
 terms. So truly, then, does history illustrate by its facts 
 the incidents here recorded to have followed the pouring 
 out of the fourth vial. 
 
 But, it is added, in the next place, " power was given 
 unto him to scorch men with fire." The angel received 
 the commission ; but he may have worked, as I have 
 formerly shown you that such angels did work, by means 
 or through agency. You will also recollect, that last 
 Sunday evening I showed you, that whilst every pro- 
 phetic symbol had its great moral fulfilment in the ac- 
 complishment of facts, it had frequently its literal ful- 
 filment in being literally brought to pass : as when it is 
 stated that a star shall come out of Jacob, every com- 
 mentator understands by that star, Christ ; but it was 
 not only fulfilled by the fact of Christ's coming, but it was 
 fulfilled also by the subordinate fact of a meteor-star lite- 
 rally appearing, and guiding the Magi to the manger of 
 the new-born Christ. Now just so here, it is said " men 
 were scorched with great heat." I have not a doubt that 
 it is to be interpreted morally; and means, as I shall show 
 you, a sore and terrible torture that was inflicted during
 
 358 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the action of this vial ; but, as I have said, it may also 
 be explained as coming literally to pass, and I do not 
 hesitate to say, that "scorched with great heat" is used 
 as the description of a literal fact, as well as the symbol 
 for the infliction of a punishment. The very name given 
 by his soldiers to Napoleon was frequently that of the 
 king of fire ; and it is well known to every one ac- 
 quainted with history and I Avould recommend every 
 Christian to read Alison's History of the French Revo- 
 lution, as the best commentary upon this portion of the 
 Apocalypse that Napoleon brought into the field of 
 battle an amount of artillery which had not been 
 brought into any previous battles : he called his artil- 
 lery the right hand of all his victories ; and his fire, 
 whether of artillery or musketry, is described by Alison 
 to have been the most overwhelming of any ever expe- 
 rienced in modern warfare j and to show the manner in 
 which he made use of it, Alison gives the description of 
 the destruction of the most splendid cavalry that per- 
 haps ever appeared upon the earth, at the battle of the 
 Pyramids, when Napoleon invaded Egypt. He describes 
 the 6000 Mameluke cavalry, each mounted on the finest 
 and strongest Arab horse each soldier, a man trained 
 from his very infancy to direct his horse, as if it were a 
 portion of himself armed to the very teeth with all 
 sorts of offensive and defensive weapons. He describes 
 the tramp of 6000 steeds, as they rushed to the battle, 
 and made the very earth, on which Napoleon's battalions 
 stood, quake and vibrate with their hoofs as if it were 
 smitten by an earthquake. He then describes the solid 
 squares of infantry instantly formed by the French to 
 receive them, and their rolling fire of musketry so fierce 
 and so sustained, that, in the course of a few hours, there 
 was scarcely a saddle that was not empty scarcely a 
 Mameluke who was not stretched upon the field of battle 
 a description therefore of that fire, which was the 
 scorching element of Napoleon's progress, as if he had 
 been the actual commentator upon the predictions of the 
 Apocalypse. But while this prophecy is literally fulfilled, 
 I cannot pass by its great design, its moral accomplish-
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 359 
 
 ment, which is not the literal occurrence of literal fire, 
 but the severe pain and torture inflicted on the French 
 themselves, and on the nations whom they visited. 
 Both the French that conquered, and their foes that fell, 
 suffered most terrible things. To refer to the French 
 alone, the conscription drained France of its finest youth 
 its very life-blood. The married were seized and 
 formed into battalions the protector of the widow was 
 taken from his home to live the life and die the death 
 of a soldier : every young man, who was old enough to 
 carry a musket, was seized, and made a soldier under 
 Napoleon ; and to refuse, was to be covered with a dress 
 of infamy, to be sent to the prisons, and loaded with 
 chains : and so dreadful was the conscription, that, after 
 the celebrated incursion into Russia, females, in France, 
 were nearly three times the number of the men ; all the 
 life-blood and strength of the nation were drained out 
 of it to be poured forth in Napoleon's wars, as offerings 
 to his insatiable ambition. Again, the way in which he 
 made war, is another evidence of the torturing character 
 of Napoleon's battles. When he made war, he did so 
 without magazines and without hospitals ; the induce- 
 ment held out to his soldiers was, that if they gained 
 the battle, they should have glory, and plenty of plunder 
 also. The French army was invariably poured into a 
 foreign country, and with no preparation of food or hos- 
 pitals. 
 
 Mr. Cuninghame received from official reports the 
 following statement : " The distress and destruction 
 which marked the countries through which the French 
 army fled from the bloody field of Leipsic were alto- 
 gether indescribable. Dead bodies covered the roads, 
 while districts were depopulated by disease. For a 
 month after the retreat, no human being, no domestic 
 animal, no poultry, not even a sparrow was to be met 
 with, only ravens feeding on corpses." So truly were 
 men scorched with fire, or tormented with the inflic- 
 tions of this vial. 
 
 But it is added here, " they repented not of their sins, 
 but blasphemed the God of heaven." As I shall have 
 occasion, in explaining the fifth vial, which immediately
 
 360 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 precedes the most momentous of them all, the sixth, to 
 comment upon their repenting not, and continuing to 
 blaspheme God, I shall not enlarge upon this which was 
 one characteristic of this vial. But I need not tell you 
 that all the punishment inflicted by the French upon 
 Austria, Italy, and Spain, and upon France by the con- 
 scription, did not, in the very least degree, cause the 
 people to put away their superstitions, and to repent of 
 their sins. France, indeed, did make a change, but it 
 was from the religion that believed nothing at all, to 
 the religion that believes every thing. It was a change 
 from Atheism, which proclaimed the horrific notion 
 there is no God, to Popery, which proclaims the super- 
 stitious and no less blasphemous notion, that the Vir- 
 gin Mary is our mediator. And, so far from there being 
 any thing like a reformation among the people, you 
 will find that, in France, at this day, men are wanting 
 among the worshippers ; the churches are filled, nine- 
 tenths of them, with poor females and children. I 
 heard a foreigner make the remark, that the number of 
 men in our congregations in this country was astonish- 
 ing to him : and, I understand, that many other fo- 
 reigners have made, still more forcibly, the same remark 
 with reference to the audience here. It is obvious to 
 you all, that three-fourths, at least, of this vast audience 
 in Exeter Hall at this moment consists of men. I think 
 I understate rather than overstate the proportion. This 
 shows, indeed, the deep interest that you take in this 
 subject, but it is not so favourable to our collections. 
 It has been calculated that, at a collection sermon, one 
 lady is equal to thirteen men that is, she gives thir- 
 teen times the amount of money towards any charitable 
 and benevolent purpose. The number of men will, in 
 a great degree, account for the deficiency of some of 
 our collections. But if the men present have derived 
 any benefit from the lectures, and have any perception 
 of the duty that devolves on them, when we have a 
 collection next Sunday for our schools, for which we 
 are in want of money, they will have a locus penitentias, 
 an opportunity of repelling the charge made against 
 them, and of showing that, if they have heads that can
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 361 
 
 more clearly comprehend, they have hearts that do not 
 less keenly feel. 
 
 I have thus described the second, third, and fourth 
 vials. My great difficulty has been how to give you 
 facts, and not to weary you : but if you will only read, 
 on the one hand, the vials in Revelation, and Alison's 
 history on the other, I think you will be quite satisfied 
 that my exposition is a just and correct one. I will now 
 draw one or two lessons for ourselves from what we 
 have been studying. 
 
 First, history is not a mere series of tumbling 
 accidents. God is in the facts of history, as well as in 
 the texts of the Bible. Even events that we cannot 
 understand, are essential, like the pins or rachets in a 
 complete system of machinery. To the eye of a super- 
 ficial beholder, these little things appear utterly worth- 
 less ; but to the person who made the machinery, and 
 comprehends its structure, the smallest pin appears so 
 indispensable to the whole, that loss of it would be the 
 destruction of all. Dear friends, God is not in great 
 events, in contradistinction to little events, but he is in 
 all. Let me take the period when the French Revolu- 
 tion broke out in 1792, and from that period downward 
 to the conquest at Waterloo in 1815. Give me the 
 power to put in a pin point in any place I shall choose 
 during the lapse of those twenty-three years, and the 
 destiny of Europe will be immediately changed. Then, 
 I say, if a pin point could alter the destiny of Europe, 
 give a new tone, a new current, a new impulse, a new 
 result to events, can we resist the idea that God is 
 in the minutest event that happens, as well as in a 
 mighty battle, a glorious conquest, the overturning of a 
 dynasty, or in the desolation of a nation ? Poor Napoleon 
 thought he was the great original he was but the mere 
 instrument in the hands of God. Napoleon thought he 
 was the statuary that could carve out things according 
 to his own pleasure. Poor man ! how little he knew ! 
 He was but the chisel, and not the statuary, and each 
 result that he accomplished, was a result contemplated 
 or permitted in the Providence of God.
 
 362 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 We learn another lesson, and not a less important 
 one how clearly a retributive providence is exhibited in 
 the history of nations ; as such I wish we could all feel 
 this lesson nations cease to exist in eternity : nations 
 are temporal things ; individuals are eternal things ; but 
 the corporation called a nation has only existence in this 
 world : hence it is true that national sins are not 
 punished in eternity as individual sins are, but they are 
 punished in time. Whenever, therefore, a nation sins, 
 that nation is sure to be scourged : each wicked action 
 of a nation awakens a thousand retributive echoes : 
 national crimes will ever be followed by retributive 
 judgment and desolation. The land that has been 
 stained most deeply with national sins, will be swept 
 most sorely by national judgments. God has said it, and 
 all history conspires and co-operates to demonstrate and 
 to prove it : and, if it be so, let old England, so spared, 
 so unscathed, watch and pray let her take care not to 
 have any alliance with that system that dishonours God, 
 tarnishes his glory, ruins souls, and has corrupted the 
 nations of the earth. The Papal nations have been 
 bitterly judged read their history read the history of 
 Spain the Spanish nation are in a continual ferment ; 
 the population, politically looked at, are on the brink of 
 a volcano the population, morally looked at, are, those 
 who are above the clay, no better than those that 
 sleep beneath. And Italy, how often visited ! how often 
 judged ! how locked in darkness, in superstition, and in 
 slumber still. Pauperism and Popery are twin sisters. 
 Look at Austria, bayonets its only battlements. Look at 
 Portugal, a wretched quagmire. Look at France, where 
 its monarch cannot calculate upon a year's immunity 
 from the insurgent or the bullet of the regicide.* Then 
 compare with these lands our own : what land is like 
 it ? what fields so green ! what sky, with all its fogs, so 
 fair ! what land equal to that we live in ! a land where 
 the slave touches its shores and his shackles drop off: 
 where we can lie down beneath the overshadowing pin- 
 
 * What evidence of the hollow state of these realms described 
 in the text by me in 1847, is presented in 1848 !
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 363 
 
 ions of the public peace, and sleep sweetly a land where 
 we can leave our children and know that they will be 
 freemen, and hope that they will be Christians a land, 
 with all its faults, unrivalled amid the nations of the 
 earth. And what has made it so ? It is the Church of 
 the living God in England's heart that is the strength 
 and stability of the diadem upon the Queen of England's 
 brow. Let the religion of our country die, and its loyalty, 
 its peace, its happiness, will die also. 
 
 Righteousness alone exalteth a people. Political 
 sagacity makes blunders ; philosophy never made a 
 people holy nor happy ; national wealth corrupts ; mili- 
 tary power is a calamity, for war is surely a curse. 
 Even if it is ever expedient it is not always just. The 
 soldier the existence of the soldier is a stern and 
 terrible necessity: much as we are indebted to him, 
 necessary as he is, we should breathe a prayer that the 
 time may come when that sword shall be turned into a 
 ploughshare, and that spear shall be made a pruning- 
 hook. What has war done for any of the nations of the 
 earth ? where is Xerxes with his myriads ? where are 
 the legions of Rome ? where is the military grandeur of 
 Napoleon ? what have they left behind them ? Babylon 
 was once as secure as London she had stronger walls 
 she had as brave a people Rome had as heroic and 
 numerous soldiers Tyre had comparatively as mighty a 
 navy Athens as profound a philosophy. A few bricks 
 are all that remain of Babylon malaria closes upon 
 Rome, now presided over by a superstitious hierarch 
 Athens is a horde of banditti. If the illustrious charac- 
 ters the philosophers the soldiers the statesmen, that 
 now sleep amid the ruins of their respective countries, 
 could speak again, they would say, " We had no power 
 to avert these disasters we could only grace the ruins of 
 the country we tried to save." You must look to some- 
 thing better, as the safety of a nation, than military 
 strength, or philosophy, or power, or literature ; and 
 that something is what the Bible tells us, " Righteous- 
 ness exalteth a nation ; sin is the ruin of any people." 
 
 And now, my dear friends, much has been written
 
 364 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 about Church and State ; much has been argued pro 
 and con, on that subject. I am not called upon now to 
 pronounce any judgment; but this I say, that the man 
 who himself becomes a true Christian, does more to make 
 his country Christian, than the man Avho delivers the 
 most eloquent speeches upon the connexion of Church 
 and State. One stone laid upon the earth is worth a 
 thousand castles built in the air ; and if you become a 
 Christian indeed, you make a greater contribution to- 
 wards the Christianization of the nation or the world 
 than all that the ablest and most excellent statesmen ever 
 proposed about Church and State. If all men would be- 
 come Christians individually, the whole nation would 
 become Christian collectively. Let me, then, my dear 
 hearers, close my remarks upon these three vials by ask- 
 ing you, are you children of God ? are you believers in 
 Christ ? have you washed your robes and made them 
 white in the blood of the Lamb ? Do you feel that every 
 moment the judgment day is coming nearer to us, and 
 that we are hurrying to the judgment seat. There is 
 not one hour of which you can say, I shall see its close. 
 Some who have appeared in this Hall since I first ad- 
 dressed you, have now passed to the judgment. Who 
 can tell but that some happy heart, that beats beneath 
 some countenance radiant with health this evening, may 
 never beat here again. I wish, my dear friends, that 
 you would not forget that, if I have told you of events 
 which concern nations, and expounded to you the mys- 
 teries of God's word, I have told you also that there is 
 precious blood which has been shed for our sins that 
 there is a righteousness which will cover you that 
 there is a coming Saviour that there is an everlasting 
 God, and if you perish, you will perish with the sounds 
 of mercy and the invitations of love sounding in the 
 depths of your heart. Men and brethren, the avenger 
 is at your heels ; Christ is the only city of refuge the 
 storm is bursting forth ; Christ is the only ark that can 
 save you the destroying angel has spread his wings on 
 the blast ; nothing but the blood of sprinkling can shield 
 you from destruction. Let me then ask you as you
 
 THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS. 365 
 
 value the safety of your soul as you would prize the 
 hopes of glory, as you would be not only holy, but, as I 
 told you this morning, as you would be happy, let me 
 beseech you to leave every question upon earth unset- 
 tled, if you like, but oh ! leave not this question unset- 
 tled, " What must I do to be saved ? " Let me speak to 
 you as to men of good sense, of reason and understand- 
 ing. Is it, let me ask you, is it reasonable that you 
 should ascertain how you stand commercially, how 
 politically, how socially, how you are circumstantially, 
 but should leave unsettled this question. Will that 
 eternity into which I am carried as upon the crest of a 
 rapid wave, and into Avhich I must plunge, and that very 
 soon will that eternity be to me one of everlasting rest, 
 or will it be to me eternal misery and woe ? Why, if 
 there be no heaven, if there be no hell, then, my dear 
 hearer, say so avow the fact, and not only avow it, but 
 learn to act upon it. If there be no God, if there be no 
 heaven, if there be no hell, burn the Bible ; do not 
 enter the house of God again ; be out and out consistent. 
 Why this shivering ? why that hesitating ? why that 
 suspicion that it may be true ? why that want of confi- 
 dence that you are right ? Oh, you know you are wrong 
 your conscience tells you that you are wrong. If there 
 be a God, if there be a heaven, if there be a hell, if there 
 be a Saviour, if there be a lost soul yet to be saved, and 
 this soul yours, then resolve as did the poor prodigal, 
 " I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto him, 
 Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, 
 and am no more worthy to be called thy son." And do 
 you think that you will be rejected ? Recollect the his- 
 tory of the prodigal. The father, we are told, " saw 
 him when he was yet a great way off, and had compassion, 
 and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." The 
 father was standing on the roof of his house, for they 
 had flat roofs in that country ; he saw at first a speck in 
 the distance ; he thought it might be an Arab travelling, 
 or a merchant disposing of his wares, but the thought did 
 strike him that it might perhaps be his poor prodigal. 
 He looked and looked again, and as the shape became
 
 366 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 more distinct, he recognised the features of his son : his 
 full heart could not wait for his son ; he ran to meet him, 
 fell upon his neck and kissed and welcomed him, "for this 
 my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is 
 found." That Father is God. God looks for you : waits 
 for you. The first movement that you make to God, God 
 will respond to it by a glorious and gracious one to you, 
 and all heaven will rejoice that some lost sinner is found 
 some poor prodigal restored to his Father's home. 
 And when other judgments far more consuming than 
 those of these vials shall light upon the earth, he will 
 address to you the gracious premonition, " Come, my 
 people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors 
 about thee : hide thyself as it were for a little moment, 
 until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the LORD 
 cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the 
 earth for their iniquity."
 
 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 
 
 " And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the 
 beast ; and his kingdom was full of darkness ; and they gnawed 
 their tongues for pain, 
 
 " And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and 
 their sores, and repented not of their deeds." Rev. xvi. 10, 11. 
 
 IT is necessary to remind you, by way of pre- 
 liminary remark, of what I have established in a pre- 
 vious lecture, that the wild beast, here spoken of, is the 
 same wild beast that came up from the abyss, and is 
 the head of the Great Western Apostacy. Its Apoca- 
 lyptic portrait is fulfilled in its actual history. The seat 
 of the beast is not his kingdom or his empire, in its 
 range from Rome to its distant provinces, but the metro- 
 political spot on which this head of the Apostacy this 
 wild beast from the abyss sits and reigns. In short, 
 it is at Rome, and in the temple of God, where he sits 
 and says he is God. I may also add, that the word in 
 the original Greek, here translated "seat," is dpovoc, 
 literally " throne ; " and you will find, by reference to 
 ecclesiastical history, that about the end of the fourth 
 century, just when the Roman Apostacy approached 
 nearly to its full development, the seat of the bishop or 
 the archbishop, the ruling power in the Christian Church, 
 came to be called, what it is still called in some portions 
 of the Protestant Church, the throne of the bishop, or 
 archbishop, or Pope. Thus the language, alone, here 
 employed indicates the seat of an ecclesiastical, as much, 
 at least, as the seat of a civil power ; and, when associated 
 with the wild beast from the abyss, whom we proved to 
 be an ecclesiastical tyrant, we can have no doubt that 
 the locality here indicated is Rome.
 
 368 ArocALrrxic SKETCHES. 
 
 Now, then, we must expect from this chapter the 
 commencement of those judgments which are detailed 
 at length in the chapter we have this evening read. We 
 may expect, from the language descriptive of this vial, 
 and from the effects that followed its effusion, that a 
 series of judgments must have begun at that time to 
 light upon the very chief seat and throne of the beast, 
 to which every Roman Catholic looks as the great centre 
 of the Christian universe, the capital of Papal Christen- 
 dom. The fourth vial closed its action at the battle of 
 Wagram, and the second subjugation of the Austrian 
 government. And just at that very period, and after 
 that memorable victory, which prostrated the Austrian 
 power, when the humbled Emperor gave his own daughter 
 (whose death has just occurred) to the conqueror, in 
 order to stave off ulterior results ; we read that Napoleon 
 issued his memorable decrees from Schoenbrunn, in Ger- 
 many, which decrees at one fell swoop abolished the 
 temporal power of the Pope, and incorporated the Roman 
 States as part and parcel of the French empire. This, I 
 say, was the ultimate result ; and the steps that pre- 
 ceded this I will now endeavour to unfold and open up. 
 I shall shoAV you, also, how completely that portion of the 
 seventeenth chapter, which describes the conduct of the 
 kings of the Roman earth, was fulfilled under the operation 
 of the fifth vial ; I shall adduce historic facts to prove 
 that the ten kings, one of whose kingdoms, namely, Bri- 
 tain, you will always recollect was separated by the great 
 earthquake at the Reformation, began to feel cold to the 
 great head of the Romish Apostacy, and even to com- 
 mence a series of attacks, which all but vitally wounded 
 that power, and certainly smote it with a paralysis, under 
 the effects of which it now shakes and trembles on the 
 throne of Italy. I may also here state that this period, the 
 commencement of the French Revolution in 1793, when 
 these judgments began to be poured out upon the seat of 
 the beast, was the close of the 1260 years to which I have 
 so frequently alluded. In the year 529, or 533, the cele- 
 brated code, called the Justinian Code, was promulgated ; 
 by which the Papal ecclesiastical power was armed with
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 369 
 
 wide civil jurisdiction, and it was authoritatively declared 
 to be heresy, and worthy of death, to dissent from the 
 Roman Catholic religion; and from 1789 to 1793, Na- 
 poleon's celebrated codes, which constitute the closing 
 period to the 1260 years, were promulgated. These made 
 a change in the constitution of Europe, just as marked 
 and as sweeping as that made by Justinian 1260 years 
 before. We therefore conclude, that the era of the 
 French Revolution was the end of those 1260 years, dur- 
 ing which the witnesses were prophesying in sackcloth. 
 It was no slight symptom of the shocks to which the Pope- 
 dom was soon to be exposed, that, so far back as the year 
 1737, the hearts of the ten kings began to grow cold to- 
 wards Antichrist, as was observed by the Venetian am- 
 bassador, " Something unnatural is coming to pass in the 
 sight of all, for the Catholic governments are beginning 
 to unite in hostility to the Roman court." In the year 
 1758, Benedict XIV., the then reigning Pontiff, made 
 concessions, in order, if possible, to stave off the evils 
 that menaced him ; but, like all partial reforms when 
 sweeping ones are needed, they only precipitated that 
 revolution which nothing could arrest but a great moral 
 and scriptural reformation. Ominous symptoms increased 
 in number and in meaning : Rome continued to shake 
 the hostile powers grew more hostile, till, in the year 
 1793, the period to which we are now alluding, France, 
 which had been for 1300 years the eldest son of the 
 Church, the great bulwark of the Papacy, broke loose 
 from its subjugation, and in that disruption shattered 
 and shook the Papal influence throughout the world. In 
 1789, one of the first steps by which this was gradually 
 accomplished, was taken by the National Assembly of 
 France when it abolished the tithes, which the Pope held 
 to be especially sacred to himself and his priesthood, and 
 substituted a small rent-charge on estates, for the pay- 
 ment of the Popish clergy. France next confiscated the 
 lands belonging to the Church, in spite of a long-estab- 
 lished' maxim, that the Pope alone could alienate pro- 
 perty that belonged to the support of the Church. 
 
 Thus, in the confiscation of all the lands and property 
 belonging to the support of the Romish Church in France 
 2 B
 
 370 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 by the secular power, we see the first sprinklings of the 
 vial on the extremities of the Church the beginning 
 of those terrible retributions which shook the system to 
 the very centre. Soon after this, four thousand monastic 
 houses, full of riches and the fat things of the earth, were 
 suppressed and rifled. Next, the clergy of France, the 
 Roman Catholic priesthood, were required and here 
 was almost the crowning stroke in France to abjure all 
 allegiance to the Pope. The Roman religion was, by act 
 of Assembly, abolished. Many of the Romish churches 
 were overturned their altars plundered the bells 
 taken down from the spires, and melted into cannon for 
 the use of the imperial army. The cathedral of Rheims 
 was converted into a gunpowder manufactory. St. 
 Denis was plundered of all its ornaments, and the leaden 
 coffins, in which was the dust of ancient kings of the 
 noblest dynasties, were turned into musket bullets ; and, 
 in a report read to the French National Assembly in 
 1795, it was stated that 15,000 cannon could be cast out 
 of church bells, and orders were given that this should 
 be done. And a traveller in France at that period 
 writes thus : " On turning the corner of a street as we 
 entered Rouen, I suddenly found coach and horses' and 
 all in the aisle of an ancient cathedral. The church 
 having devolved to the nation as its property, was sold 
 for stables to one of the owners of the Rouen diligences. 
 An old cab occupied the place of the altar, and the 
 horses were eating their oats in the sacristy." And the 
 Rev. Dr. Waugh, whose name is cherished in the grate- 
 ful recollection of thousands, who was as distinguished for 
 his beautiful character, as he was for his pure piety and 
 eminent devotion to all that was benevolent and Chris- 
 tian, states, that in 1802 he " visited the various churches 
 in Dieppe, and found, in one of the most beautiful, two 
 men winnoAving wheat before the pulpit, and another 
 splendid church was filled with wheat," being turned 
 into a granary. At the period of which we have been 
 speaking, 4000 Roman Catholic priests were massacred 
 under circumstances of unparalleled cruelty, and those 
 who escaped this too justly -merited retribution with their 
 lives, passed into this country, and found shelter beneath
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 371 
 
 the shadow of that throne, which affords a refuge to the 
 persecuted whatever be his principles, and refuses not its 
 shelter to the sufferer, from whatever clime or country 
 that sufferer may come. In this tragedy these very Roman 
 Catholic priests, who were either massacred, or fled for 
 refuge to this country, seem to have been made to drink 
 the blood which they had so fearfully shed upon previous 
 occasions ; and they afford us fresh evidence that never 
 did a man draw the sword of persecution against his 
 fellow man, without the sword exchanging hands, and 
 being turned fatally upon himself. Hatred of the Ro- 
 mish Church and the Romish clergy grew, and in no 
 place experienced an abatement. Belgium and Italy 
 and Germany were all severally more or less infected 
 with this anti-papal feeling, and at last Buonaparte, 
 unsatisfied because he could not be satisfied and every 
 conqueror who has swept the earth like a simoom has only 
 left the traces of the fact, that when the world itself was 
 conquered, the conqueror must sit down, like another 
 Alexander, and weep because there was not another world 
 to overrun and conquer still Napoleon, I say, dissatisfied 
 with all that had yet been done, at length moved towards 
 Rome itself, the seat of the beast. At this crisis, when 
 the French army was gathering like a portentous cloud 
 upon the more distant provinces, and appeared ready to 
 concentrate on the very seat or throne of the Pontiff, 
 the Pope sagaciously parried the last blow, by giving 
 up to Napoleon Ferrara, Romagna, and Ancona, called 
 Peter's Patrimony that is, the special property of the 
 Pontiff, paying down fifteen hundred thousand crowns, 
 surrendering the military stores, and one hundred of the 
 choicest pictures in the Vatican. In short, he made every 
 sacrifice to keep the conqueror at bay, and save Rome 
 from utter desolation. The French ambassador thus 
 writes from Rome to Napoleon with prophetic signifi- 
 cance " The payment stipulated by the treaty of Tolen- 
 tino has totally exhausted this old carcase, we are making 
 it consume by a slow fire" So truly does history fulfil 
 the words, " These kings shall hate the whore, and shall 
 make her desolate and naked, and burn her as with fire." 
 Rev. xvii. 16. 
 
 2 B 2
 
 372 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Near, however, as these judgments were, they were not 
 yet near enough. The contents of the vial had yet to 
 sprinkle the throne of the Pope. One day the Pope was 
 seated on his pontifical throne, in the Sistine chapel of 
 the Vatican, the ante-hall of which (the Sala Borgia) is 
 covered with frescoes representing the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew's day. The cardinals in their gorgeous 
 robes had all assembled round him to congratulate him 
 on the anniversary of his elevation to the Popedom : 
 while he was receiving the congratulations of the Con- 
 clave the noise of axes and the battering of doors fell 
 unexpectedly on his ears : inquiry was made, and the 
 awful tidings, which almost broke the heart of the Pon- 
 tiff, were conveyed, that the French were thundering at 
 the very doors of the Vatican, and were come to demand 
 his Holiness as a prisoner. In a few moments they 
 were in the midst of the church ; the Pontiff was 
 arrested as a culprit and made a prisoner ; the episcopal 
 ring, which was the symbol of his marriage to the 
 Church, was torn from his finger, and he was marched 
 amid files of soldiers from the Sistine chapel, through 
 that memorable ante-hall, in which were the pictures 
 of the murdered saints of St. Bartholomew's day, and 
 the recorded expression of Papal thanks to the French 
 king for slaughtering so many thousands of the Pro- 
 testants of France. Surely the echoes of that fearful 
 day must have rung in his ears as if his own death- 
 knell ! Surely the conviction must have flashed across 
 the Pontiff's mind, that now was the hour and power of 
 righteous retribution, and having murdered the saints 
 of God, he was now in turn committed to the tender mer- 
 cies of the murderers of mankind ! He died in exile 
 in 1799. 
 
 Thus the vial began to sprinkle the very throne of the 
 beast ; and as if a Roman cardinal were raised to give 
 evidence of the fulfilment of Apocalyptic prophecy, Car- 
 dinal Pacca, who was seen standing near the Pope, ex- 
 claimed, in the agony of his soul, " Consummatum est ! " 
 there is an end of the Papal empire ! all is over ! the 
 end of religion is come ! True, the words were uttered 
 too soon. Rome was to be punished, but not yet utterly
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 373 
 
 to perish. The Apostacy is to be consumed it is the 
 language of Thessalonians " by the spirit of the Lord's 
 mouth : " and it began to consume at the end of the 
 1260 years, in 1793, but it is to be destroyed only by 
 the brightness of the Redeemer's coming. The cardinal, 
 therefore, anticipated the time ; the first stroke was 
 struck ; the presentiment of ruin was felt ; the beast upon 
 his throne began to be destroyed by the judgments of God. 
 In 1804 the then reigning Pope was summoned by 
 Napoleon to Paris, to lend the consecration of his pre- 
 sence to the crowning of Napoleon, a strange and won- 
 derful event ; that the sacerdotal hierarchy, who made 
 kings quail upon their thrones who made the nations 
 quiver and tremble if their names were but uttered 
 that Pontiff, so awful in the past, so irresistible in his 
 power, was commanded by one who was recently a sub- 
 altern in the French army, to march to Paris and do the 
 biddings of a greater tyrant, seated on a yet greater 
 throne. Napoleon had no faith in the Pope's pretensions. 
 All he designed was to dazzle the Parisian crowd, not 
 to honour the Pope, and to show this he departed from 
 all previous order in his coronation. It had been usual 
 that a minister of religion should place the crown upon 
 the king's brow, and pray, as was most proper, for 
 blessings upon the head that was to wear that crown ; 
 but, on this occasion, Napoleon put the crown upon his 
 own head ; but while he did so, he felt it would not be 
 prudent to appear to his vast empire to be hostile to 
 religion ; for this purpose he ordered the Pontiff to 
 come from Rome, not to put the crown upon his head, 
 but, by his presence as a vassal, to swell the pageant and 
 swing the censer of incense to Napoleon's ambition, 
 and make his people believe that, while he was an in- 
 fidel at heart, he had no apparent indisposition to play 
 the Papist for the nonce. The Directory wished to ex- 
 tinguish the Pope, and put an end to Popery at once, but 
 Napoleon saw that this would not do ; he therefore re- 
 tained the Pope merely as an appendage to his autocratic 
 throne, a sort of nimbus round it, being as willing to 
 act the Romanist in Europe, as he was to play the Ma- 
 hometan in Asia.
 
 374 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 After this followed the decrees of Schoenbrunn, to 
 which I have referred as the crowning stroke, and the 
 ten kings, England always excepted, as having severed 
 frcm the Papacy, gave in their adhesion to the decree of 
 Napoleon : there was Louis, king of Holland ; Jerome, 
 king of Westphalia ; the princes of Bavaria, Wurtem- 
 burg, and the Swiss Cantons ; the Austrian emperor ; 
 the kings of Italy, Naples, Spain, and Portugal ; all con- 
 curred in these decrees, and thus acted in concert toge- 
 ther against the Roman Pontiff: so that it may truly be 
 said, that the ten kings should " hate, and strip naked, 
 and consume the beast as it were by fire." 
 
 The substance of these decrees was as follows: first, 
 the total abolition of the temporal power of the Pope ; 
 next, the incorporation of Rome as the second city, not 
 the first, in the French empire ; thirdly, the appointment 
 of a committee for the civil government of Rome ; and, 
 lastly, a pension settled on the Pope on the withdrawal 
 of all his temporal immunities, and the "Vicar of Christ," 
 the great head of the Apostacy, thus made a mere de- 
 pendent stipendiary of the king or the emperor of 
 France. You ask, perhaps, how the Pope's proud heart 
 brooked all this ? He brooked it ill ; he protested loudly 
 against it ; and, at the very time that this was done, he 
 issued one of his ancient bulls, containing all the bitter 
 and prescriptive language of the middle ages ; but his 
 thunders had lost their power ; they bore the aspect of 
 theatrical thunder his bolts hurt none, and Buonaparte 
 smiled at the old priest's parchment, and the nations 
 saw that the voice that once shook the world had lost its 
 magic, though not its spirit, among the people. 
 
 Thus the hierarch who had ruled the souls of men 
 was made a stipendiary of France the idol to whom 
 1260 years had offered incense was struck from its pe- 
 destal, and, ultimately, carried to Fontainbleau, where 
 he signed a concordat, the first condition of which was 
 his abandonment of Rome ; and afterwards to Paris as 
 a captive, subject to the bidding of his imperial master. 
 His final destruction, however, was .not yet come ; the 
 vial was poured out, as we are told in the text, upon 
 the throne of the beast ; his kingdom was full of dark-
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 375 
 
 ness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain, but the 
 day of the utter destruction of the beast was not yet 
 arrived ; for, after Napoleon's fall, evidence was too 
 plainly presented, that the hour of the final overthrow of 
 Antichrist was not yet come, inasmuch as Popery was 
 again recognised in France, not indeed as the only reli- 
 gion, but as one among the European sects. In Spain 
 Romanism rules, but with all its property confiscated ; 
 in Portugal it holds also but a lingering existence ; and 
 there seems to be, in short, clear evidence that the fierce 
 ecclesiastical despotism that reigned over the nations of 
 Europe is crippled as a civil power.* The continental 
 nations know Popery by bitter experience. The only 
 people that seems to give recognition to Rome, is the na- 
 tion that was severed from it 300 years ago, now so obli- 
 vious of the past, as to be ready to relapse into it again. 
 It is said, " they blasphemed God, and repented not 
 of their deeds." This is writ upon the history of Europe, 
 as well as upon the history of Rome. The nations that 
 had been scourged by Napoleon, and crushed by the Pope, 
 felt the judgments, but they repented not of the crimes 
 that brought them down. The expression blasphemy, 
 I need scarcely explain to you, denotes to give to idols 
 the attributes of God, or for men to assume the preroga- 
 tives of God : so in one passage, " Why doth this man 
 speak blasphemy ?" It is then explained what blasphemy 
 is : " Who can forgive sins but God only ? " Then, again, 
 " Your fathers burned incense unto graven images," 
 that is the exercise of idolatry, "and blasphemed me;" 
 showing that to assume God's prerogative is blasphemy, 
 just as much as to attribute that prerogative to an idol. 
 The nations punished for their sins, and idolatries, and 
 persecution of the truth, relapsed into their former crimes, 
 and subservience to spiritual, if not to political Popery. 
 A deputation from the London Missionary Society, at 
 the head of which was Dr. Waugh, of whom I have be- 
 fore spoken, visited France. After the revolutionary 
 storm had passed away, and one would have thought 
 
 * The third French Revolution, February, 1848, renounces all 
 payment of the Romish or any other priesthood : Lacordaire, the 
 eloquent priest, advocates this.
 
 376 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the crushed and bleeding heart of humanity would have 
 turned to God, the living God, we read that in Paris 
 it required a search of four days among the bookshops 
 to find one single Bible, and this was supposed to be the 
 state not of Paris only, but of great part of France. In 
 Germany, which had been punished so severely in the 
 revolutionary wars, morality became utterly stagnant, 
 and the bonds of the social fabric and the ties of rela- 
 tive life in numerous instances dissolved. In Spain, as 
 Blanco White shows, the priests were the chief cor- 
 rupters of the people, and the people loved to have it so. 
 In Italy, which was the very throne of the beast, where 
 we might have expected repentance and reformation, if 
 judgments could produce it, morality was prostrate on 
 the earth ; the marriage-vow was then, as now, prac- 
 tically superseded ; licentiousness prevailed in the ranks 
 of the nobility till whole families were extinguished ; 
 contamination tainted the masses of the people. In 
 Florence then, as now, no lady of fashion appears abroad 
 without a second and subordinate husband ; and in 
 Naples this arrangement is generally in the marriage 
 contract. An historian of the day states, an assassin 
 might be hired in Naples to murder any one for fifty 
 livres, and a hackney swearer might be had for twelve 
 to exculpate him.* Ireland and Italy have the same re- 
 ligious roots, and bring forth very much the same fruits. 
 In the Romish Church itself no reformation took place 
 in its dogmas ; no attempt was made at retracing its 
 steps ; weeping Madonnas, supposed to have disappear- 
 ed during the desecrating marches of the French, now 
 appeared in every town ; images of the Virgin were 
 set up in every church and cathedral throughout the 
 States of the Church ; miracles, it was stated, were 
 wrought in every portion of the Italian nation. Instances 
 of the Virgin's approval of the faithfulness of the faith- 
 ful manifested themselves in shapes the most grotesque 
 and absurd, while the restored Pope, borne back to his 
 scorched seat by four heretical kings, though he had felt 
 so much the force of a tyrant's power, and so substantially 
 
 * Since the first edition of these Lectures, a wholesale illustra- 
 tion of this fitness for massacre has occurred at Naples.
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 377 
 
 the generosity of royal heretics, yet abated not one par- 
 ticle of his intolerable pretensions, for Pius VII. declared 
 "that the penalties of confiscation, so far as concerns 
 private property, is declared by the bull of Innocent III. ; 
 and as concerning sovereignties and fiefs, it is the rule 
 of the canon law, that the subjects of princes manifestly 
 heretical are released from all obligations to them, and 
 are dispensed from all allegiance to them, although 
 we are fallen on such calamitous times that it is not 
 possible for the spouse of Christ to practise, or even 
 expedient to recall, her holy maxims of just severity 
 against the enemies of our most holy faith." (Donnoghue, 
 vol. ii. p. 447.) I need not tell you perhaps, for you 
 probably know it, that it is an established principle of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, and I can quote canons of 
 their Councils and decrees of their Popes to prove it, 
 that the allegiance of subjects to princes that are Pro- 
 testant is, ipso facto, dissolved, and that they owe such 
 princes no loyalty or obedience whatever. Now, after 
 four heretical princes had carried back the Pope to his 
 palace, and placed him again upon his throne, and after 
 the peace that followed 1815 had dawned upon the world, 
 we find not one trace of repentance or of reformation, 
 or modification of his persecuting spirit ; on the contrary, 
 we read that the Pope, just before he entered Rome, 
 borne almost upon the shoulders of heretical princes, 
 proclaimed himself " God's vicar upon earth the vicar 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ." " At Ancona a miraculous 
 wooden Virgin, according to Abbe Albertine, appeared 
 which opened and closed its eyes, and turned them in all 
 directions, to the indescribable delight of the people." 
 On May 13, 1814, Pope Pius VII. crowned the image, 
 and attached a plenary indulgence to all who should 
 visit it and offer devout and suitable prayers to it. 
 After this, we read that he restored the Jesuits, who had 
 been dissolved by Gregory XIV. as " an intolerable nui- 
 sance," and issued his celebrated encyclical letter against 
 the Bible Society. Pope Pius VII. thus addressed all 
 Roman Catholic prelates and priests in Christendom 
 
 " The Bible Societies endeavour to translate, or rather 
 corrupt, the Holy Scriptures into the tongues of all
 
 378 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 nations, which gives us just reason to fear that we may 
 there find, instead of the gospel of Christ, the gospel of 
 men, or what is worse, the gospel of the devil." 
 
 Thus Pope Pius VII. cursed the translation of the 
 Bible ; thus Gregory XVI., as I have shown you, 
 denounced the duty of understanding the Bible ; and, 
 lastly, Pius IX., the reigning Pontiff, so liberal in 
 politics, but so rigid in Popery, has condemned, with 
 equal virulence, and equal plainness, the circulation and 
 understanding of the word of God. In 1825, Pope 
 Pius VII. published a bull of Jubilee, in which he invites 
 the faithful of every land to visit the exhibition of the 
 actual cradle of our blessed Lord.* So little did they 
 repent of their superstitions or reform their principles. 
 About this time, also, Pope Pius VII. renewed the reading 
 of the bull called the bull in ccend Domini a bull that is 
 now in force in Ireland, though declared by the civil 
 powers in various countries to be utterly incompatible with 
 the very existence of loyalty and allegiance to the throne. 
 In that memorable bull, which was read every Maundy 
 Thursday at Rome, till within a very recent period, and 
 may still be so, we shall find the following extract : 
 
 " We do, in behalf of Almighty God, the Father and 
 the Son and the Holy Ghost, and with the authority of 
 the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and with our own, 
 excommunicate and anathematize all Hussites, Wick- 
 liffites, Lutherans, Calvinists, and all and sundry other 
 heretics, by whatsoever name they may be reckoned." 
 
 Such is the power claimed by the Pontiff. I wish to 
 read you a striking illustration that these pretensions do 
 not become obsolete with the lapse of years. You have 
 heard me speak of the assumed liberality of the Pontiff 
 that now occupies the Papal throne ; you have heard, 
 too, our Roman Catholic fellow countrymen declare that 
 the pretensions of the Pope to have dominion over the 
 subjects of England have been exploded long ago, and 
 were the absurdities of a bygone and effete super- 
 stition. Now there is a newspaper published in London, 
 which is the organ of the Roman Catholic body, called 
 
 * Lately there has been a grand procession at Rome, Pius IX. 
 at the head of it, on the recovery of a head of St. Andrew.
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 379 
 
 the Tablet, written with much talent, and containing 
 much information on the Roman Catholic controversy : 
 the Tablet writes upon this very point ; and urges the 
 fact, that the Romish priests in this country are "the 
 subjects of the Pope," and that he " commands," not ex- 
 horts them. 
 
 Now nothing can be more plain than this, that the 
 Popes of Rome have not abjured the pretensions of the 
 past, nor repented of the absolute sovereignty that they 
 assumed over the subjects of the queens and kings 
 and princes of the earth. Whatever men may think, 
 the wild beast from the abyss, and the great corporation 
 of which he is the head, change not. That system 
 remains the same, amid the light of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, that it was when Hildebrand made Europe echo 
 his thunders, and prostrate kings bow their necks upon 
 the earth. Rome may array herself in the drapery of 
 outward meekness, wreathe her face with smiles, and 
 deck her brow with the crown of toleration, but she 
 still holds fast the principles, and will carry those prin- 
 ciples into practice when she has the power, that made 
 the soil of Europe red with the blood of saints, and its 
 winds to be the vehicles of the lamentations of saints 
 and the moans of the martyrs of Jesus. And I believe 
 that one of the most complete pathways for the return 
 of Romanism into this country, is the belief which 
 plausible priests and Jesuits endeavour to impress upon 
 you, that Rome, like wine long kept, has improved 
 itself in quality, in flavour, and in all respects : but when 
 a Roman Catholic priest tells you so, he himself secretly 
 laughs at your credulity in believing him ; for if Rome has 
 changed, her infallibility is gone. She must have been 
 fallible if she erred. She may err again. Before such 
 an admission she would fall. If what was infallibly true 
 in the fifteenth century has become infallibly false in the 
 nineteenth, Rome has changed, she is not the Church 
 which she pretends to be : her right arm is from that 
 moment paralyzed, and the deference of the nations will 
 be utterly withdrawn from her : but she claims to be 
 the same to-day that she was a thousand years ago : she 
 cannot be improved, she must be destroyed : she is not
 
 380 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 to be converted, she is to be destroyed ; God's people are 
 to leave her, but the great fabric is to be overwhelmed 
 by the brightness of the Redeemer's coming. 
 
 And now, my dear friends, having noticed thus the 
 judgments of the fifth vial, as poured out upon the seat 
 of the beast, and having seen, in the course of these five 
 vials, the frightful effects of infidelity, when rampant, the 
 one day, and of papal superstition, when dominant, the 
 next, let us learn the great lesson, that pure and scrip- 
 tural religion alone is the life-blood of England, the 
 Palladium of her people, her only element of safety amid 
 the wreck of nations. In pleading this day for your aid 
 to our schools,* if I be asked, what, under God, will 
 save us from the contamination of the blasphemies of 
 the sceptic, or from the contagion of the superstitions 
 of the Papist ? I say, Bible education. If you ask me, 
 what will replenish old England with sons worthy of 
 their sires, and make those sons stand erect beside the 
 ashes of their fathers, and pronounce them, with thanks- 
 giving to God, blessed ? it will be Bible education. If 
 you ask me, what will save our country from the scourge 
 of war what will prevent it from becoming the victim 
 of intoxication and licentiousness what will save it from 
 being exhausted by civil feuds, or torn up by the shat- 
 tering artillery of Avar ? My answer is, Bible education. 
 If you ask me, what will save us from that infidelity 
 that revels in its licence without control, and from that 
 superstition that exercises a despotism over soul and 
 body ? If you ask me, what will save us from those wild 
 and sensual opinions that rise, like miasma, from the 
 fens and marshes of popular ignorance, or what will pro- 
 tect us from those deadly passions that breed like reptiles 
 beneath a scorching sun ? My answer is, Christian 
 education. The good and the pious of past ages have 
 left us noble heritages ; we are bound to perpetuate 
 them. We have received from our fathers an open 
 Bible, we have been taught to read, to understand, and 
 
 * Schools are now built adjoining the church in Crown Court, 
 capable of holding five or six hundred children, at an expense of 
 nearly 3000, for which the author earnestly asks aid.
 
 THE FIFTH VIAL. 381 
 
 to rejoice in its truth ; let us resolve, that when we lie 
 down, as we must lie down, upon the last bed, and when 
 our children shall gather around us to bid us a last fare- 
 well, to be able to tell them, If we have not increased the 
 blessings of your ancient heritage, we have not impaired 
 them if we have not added to your religious freedom, 
 we have not crushed it if we have done nothing to 
 make you nobler, holier, happier, we have done nothing 
 to make you worse. Let us resolve, by the grace of God, 
 that wherever the pall of Papal superstition shall spread 
 wheresoever the waters of the Tiber shall roll their 
 pestiferous torrent wheresoever the torch of Christian 
 freedom, and of manly patriotism, and of true faith, 
 shall expire, it shall not be in that land that was watered 
 by the blood of saints in the bosom of which the ashes 
 of our Cranmers, and Latimers, and Knoxes, and Wil- 
 berforces, and others, still repose. If any one in this 
 assembly shall be found so faithless as to betray the 
 sacred trust, or so callous as to refuse to perpetuate it, 
 the hearts of those sainted men will surely become quick 
 in their graves, and beat beneath the sod with indigna- 
 tion or rise to protest against the sacrilege as dis- 
 honourable to God, and discreditable to us all. If we 
 desire others to see our land the most beautiful of the 
 isles of the sea, happy, holy, religious, with its establish- 
 ments for charity, its asylums for the aged, its hospitals 
 for the sick, its shores on which slavery cannot forge its 
 chains, and on which freedom an exile from the earth 
 can find a footing and a home if we wish to perpetuate 
 a land where Sabbath light shall not be dimmed with 
 the smoke of the factory, and the chime of whose 
 Sabbath bells shall not be mingled with the discord of 
 the railway whistle if we wish to see it remain a land 
 in which we can lie down and not fear, under the over- 
 shadowing wings of public sentiment, and public purity, 
 and public justice let us give the generation of outcast 
 children, of whom there are literally many thousands 
 around the site of these schools, now rising around their 
 sires, the blessings of a Christian, a Bible education.
 
 LECTURE XX. 
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 
 
 " And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river 
 Euphrates ; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of 
 the kings of the east might be prepared. 
 
 " And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth 
 of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the 
 mouth of the false prophet. 
 
 " For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go 
 forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to 
 gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." 
 
 REV. xvi. 1214. 
 
 THE great river Euphrates, as I have already shown, 
 denotes the Turkish or Mahometan power. Like a 
 stream that had overflowed its banks, the Turko-Ma- 
 hometan nations had overspread vast portions of the 
 earth, and impressed their principles completely over a 
 great part of Christendom. " From the Chinese fron- 
 tier," says Gibbon, "he stretched his jurisdiction west 
 and south as far as the neighbourhood of Constantinople, 
 the holy city of Jerusalem, the spicy groves of Arabia 
 Felix, an extent of dominion which surpassed the Asiatic 
 reign of Cyrus and the caliphs." 
 
 The evaporation of this Euphrates was fixed by 
 Daniel, chap. viii. 15 25. 
 
 Bicheno, in A. D. 1797, fixed the commencement of 
 the 2300 years at the year B. c. 480, and predicted the 
 commencement of its decline to be 1819. Mr. Elliott 
 calculates that 1849 will finish the Turkish power, and 
 break up and scatter all its national cohesion. On the 
 same data he determines Daniel's prophecy, xii. 11, 
 " And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be 
 taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate 
 set up, there shall be 1290 days. Blessed is he that 
 waiteth and cometh to the 1335 days."
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 383 
 
 The first portion of the 1335 days expired at the 
 French Revolution, A. D. 1793 ; the second expired at 
 the beginning of the decline of the Turko-Mahometan 
 power or drying up of the Euphrates, A. D. 1820. 
 The last portion will expire A. D. 1865, at which, or 
 soon after, will be the advent of Christ, and the first re- 
 surrection, and beginning of the Millennium. 
 
 It has been disputed whether " kings of the east " 
 really describes the Jews. The original air' araToXwv 
 does not necessarily mean that they shall be in the east 
 at their conversion as a nation ; but that they are ori- 
 ginally from the east, or of eastern origin. 
 
 At the same time it is not unimportant to add, that 
 there is an express prediction of their progress westward, 
 and from the regions in the east, at the time of their call 
 in Isaiah, xi. 14, " But they shall fly upon the shoulders 
 of the Philistines towards the west, they shall spoil 
 them of the east together." 
 
 " The drying up of the Euphrates" began about 1820. 
 In that very year, accordingly, the revolt of Ali Pacha 
 took place. In 1822 the Greek provinces rose as by an 
 irresistible impulse, and warred successfully against their 
 Moslem oppressors. Russia next entered into conflict 
 with Turkey, and exhausted her resources and crippled 
 her energies. The Janissaries were next broken up 
 the peculiarities of Mahometanism have disappeared one 
 after another and even in 1834, so far had this drying 
 up or progressive Avasting of the Ottoman empire pro- 
 ceeded, that M. Delamartine, in the Chamber of De- 
 puties in Paris, unconsciously illustrated the truth and 
 fulfilment of the Apocalyptic vision, when he said, 
 " The Ottoman empire is no empire at all ; it is a mis- 
 shapen agglomeration of different races without cohesion 
 between them with mingled interests without a lan- 
 guage without laws without religion without unity 
 or stability of power. You see that the breath of life 
 which animated it namely, religious fanaticism is ex- 
 tinct. You see that its fatal and blinded administration 
 has devoured the race of conquerors, and that Turkey is 
 perishing for want of Turks."
 
 384 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 " How far the angel's vial has taken effect," says the 
 author of the " Kings of the East," " and in what manner 
 it has performed its commissioned work, will be best seen 
 by taking a retrospective glance at Turkey, and by com- 
 paring her state twenty years ago with her condition 
 now. During the wars of the French Revolution, whilst 
 the armies of France desolated Spain, Portugal, Ger- 
 many, Holland, Russia, Prussia, Italy, and Austria, 
 Turkey escaped comparatively harmless. The 'Annual 
 Register' records, in 1820, 'The Ottoman empire, by 
 a long and unwonted good fortune, found itself at the 
 commencement of the era (1820) freed at once from 
 foreign war and domestic rebellion.' 
 
 "We see, then, Turkey, at the beginning of 1820, 
 blest with more than ordinary repose the fearful calm 
 which too frequently, however, denotes a storm. Peace- 
 ful within and without, she appeared to the world, and 
 was respected, as a powerful and mighty nation. Con- 
 trast her present condition distracted by rebellion 
 among her provinces stripped of large portions of her 
 empire, Greece, Egypt, Algeria, Wallachia, Moldavia, 
 and all which she possessed north of the Danube unable 
 to defend herself against her own vassal obliged to ask 
 for aid from her great enemy, the Russian, to protect 
 her capital, and from other nations whom she has for 
 years regarded as the great enemies of her faith. Her 
 treasury exhausted, her trade and manufactures de- 
 stroyed ; without her wonted tribute from the provinces, 
 and all the sources of wealth dried up ; she sits an ob- 
 ject of pitiable helplessness amidst the nations." 
 
 Dr. Keith, in his " Signs of the Times," has stated the 
 troubles which since 1820 have in succession been poured 
 upon Turkey. 
 
 "In the summer of 1820, Ali Pacha of Albania de- 
 clared his independence. In the November of the same 
 year the Suliots returned to their country from the Ionian 
 Islands, and raised the standard of rebellion against the 
 Sublime Porte. In April, 1821, the Greek insurrection 
 broke out at Patras, whilst the empire was distracted at 
 the same time by insurrections in various provinces.
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 385 
 
 " Theodore, at the head of 10,000 insurgents, raised 
 the standard of revolt in Wallachia. Prince Ypsilanti 
 revolted in Moldavia. Candia refused the usual tribute, 
 and all Greece Avas in arms. In September, 1821, two 
 irruptions were made into the Turkish dominion by the 
 Persian princes, Mahomed Ali Mir/a and Abbas Mirza. 
 The Prince Royal crossed the frontier towards the end 
 of July, 1822, and defeated an army of 52,000 Turks, 
 who fled in disorder from the field. On the 13th of the 
 same month, Aleppo, the capital of Syria, was destroyed 
 by an earthquake. Antioch, formerly its capital, was 
 also overthrown by the same visitation. In 1823 the 
 war in Greece raged with unabated fury. 
 
 " The year 1824 was peculiarly signalized by the 
 triumphs of the Greeks both by sea and land ; and whilst 
 these insurgents were universally successful, fresh dan- 
 gers threatened the Ottoman empire. 
 
 "In 1825 both the populace and the Janissaries in 
 Constantinople were in a state of great fermentation. 
 The Janissaries revolted and rebelled, pillaged the palaces 
 of the Porte, and committed the most frightful excesses 
 throughout Constantinople. The Sultan in consequence 
 determined to destroy them utterly ; and on the 15th 
 July, 1826, he caused the Etmeidan, where the Janis- 
 saries were assembled in a dense and tumultuous crowd, 
 to be surrounded by 60,000 men : the attack began on 
 the part of the Sultan, by a murderous discharge of 
 grape-shot ; many were killed on the spot, and the sur- 
 vivors retired to their barracks. These, like the Etmei- 
 dan, were surrounded by cannon, and the buildings set 
 fire to, in which horrible situation the whole body of the 
 Janissaries perished. 
 
 " In the next month a great fire broke out, and de- 
 stroyed 6000 houses in the most wealthy and magnificent 
 parts of the city. 
 
 "In 1827 the battle of Navarino was fought, and the 
 destruction of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets gave the 
 command of the Euxine to Russia, and paved the way 
 for fresh disasters to the Turkish empire. 
 
 " On the 26th of April, 1828, Russia declared war 
 2 c
 
 386 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 against Turkey, and immediately afterwards attacked 
 the Sultan in his Asiatic pashalics. 
 
 " In 1829, after successively defeating the Turkish 
 armies to the east and north, in Anatolia, and on the 
 shores of the Euxine, the Russians passed the Balkan, 
 and fixed their head-quarters in the city of Adrianople. 
 On hearing the near approach of the victorious Russians, 
 the Sublime Porte submitted to the terms of peace dic- 
 tated by the victors. Liberty from the Turkish yoke 
 was secured to the principalities of Moldavia and Wal- 
 lachia, and not a Turk was permitted to reside north of 
 the Danube. The liberty and independence of Servia, 
 and the region inhabited by Franks in the European 
 dominions of Turkey, had their liberty secured, Greece 
 being already free." 
 
 "In 1829 the French seized upon Algiers, and con- 
 verted a province of Turkey into a French colony. 
 
 " In 1828 the Pacha of Egypt determined upon the 
 conquest of Syria, and, under the pretence of putting 
 down an insurrection, sent a fleet well supplied, to exe- 
 cute his purposes. His preparations soon alarmed the 
 Sultan, who sent an envoy to the Pacha at Alexandria ; 
 who, seeing through the measures of the wily vassal, 
 demanded of him plainly, ' What is it you really require 
 from the Sublime Porte ?' ' My object,' said the Pacha, 
 * is to keep what I have got. In a few days Acre must 
 be mine : if the Sultan consents to my keeping it, I shall 
 stop there ; if the Sultan refuses, I shall take Damascus : 
 if Damascus be granted me, there I shall stop ; but if it 
 be not, I shall take Aleppo. If the Sultan will not 
 grant it me then who knows Allah Kerim God is 
 merciful !' 
 
 " The Sultan rejected the terms, and Ibrahim ad- 
 vanced victoriously forward till Acre surrendered, after 
 a siege of eight months, in May, 1832. Continuing his 
 forward movement, the army of Ibrahim soon overran 
 all Syria, and driving before him the forces of the Sul- 
 tan, passed the defiles of the Taurus, defeated the army 
 under the Grand Vizier, in the plain of Koniah, on the 
 J 9th December, 1832.
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 387 
 
 " lie had now only to march upon Constantinople, 
 and give a meaning to the incoherent expressions of his 
 father. Nothing remained to oppose his progress to the 
 capital. In this dilemma the Sultan applied to Russia 
 for aid, who immediately sent an army of 50,000 men, 
 and ten ships of the line, with several frigates, to Con- 
 stantinople. The Russians occupied the heights of Un- 
 kiar Skelessi, and placed themselves between Ibrahim 
 and his prize. Ibrahim had, however, arrived at Brussa 
 before the news of the armistice between the Sultan and 
 his father reached him. On the 5th of May, 1833, the 
 Sultan entered into a convention with Mehemet Ali, 
 giving up to him Adana, and the whole of Syria. From 
 this period the Pacha of Egypt considered himself the 
 sovereign of Syria, and sent, in 1835, an official note to 
 the governments of Austria, France, and England, to 
 obtain their consent to the consolidation of his power 
 over his conquests. The British ambassador opposed, 
 and the conquest of Syria was never recognised by the 
 European powers. 
 
 " The inhabitants of Syria from 1834 to 1837 were in 
 frequent, if not constant, rebellion. On the 8th of May, 
 1839, the Sultan pronounced the Pacha of Egypt and 
 his son Ibrahim deposed ; and appointed Hafiz Pacha, 
 the Ottoman general, governor of Egypt." 
 
 " 'Within the last twenty years' (says Mr. Walsh, as 
 quoted by Dr. Keith) ' Constantinople has lost one half 
 of its population. Two conflagrations happened while I 
 was at Constantinople, and destroyed fifteen thousand 
 houses. The Russian and Greek wars were a constant 
 drain on the Janissaries of the capital. The silent oper- 
 ation of the plague is continually active, though not 
 always alarming ; it will be considered no exaggeration 
 to say, that within the period mentioned, from three to 
 four hundred thousand persons have been prematurely 
 swept away in one city of Europe, by causes which were 
 not operating in any other, conflagration, pestilence, 
 and civil commotion. The Turks, though naturally of 
 a robust and vigorous constitution, addict themselves to 
 such habits as are very unfavourable to population : the 
 2 c 2
 
 388 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 births do little more than exceed the ordinary deaths, 
 and cannot supply the waste of casualties. The sur- 
 rounding country is therefore constantly drained to sup- 
 ply the waste in the capital, which nevertheless exhibits 
 districts nearly depopulated. If we suppose that these 
 causes operate more or less in every part of the Turkish 
 empire, it will not be too much to say, that there is 
 more of human life wasted, and less supplied, than in 
 any other country. We see every day life going out in 
 the fairest portion of Europe, and the human race 
 threatened with extinction in a soil and climate capable 
 of supporting the most abundant population.'" (See 
 " The Kings of the East," pp. 211.) 
 
 From that time the Turkish nation has rapidly 
 wasted ; the last streamlet is barely discernible in the 
 once full and overflowing channel of the great Euphrates. 
 The SHADOWS of Russia and Britain are at this moment, 
 by a strange combination, spread over it to prevent its 
 entire evaporation. They will not succeed. God has 
 pronounced its doom, and no power on earth can prevent 
 its speedy accomplishment. Yea, all efforts to arrest, 
 will only precipitate the sure catastrophe. The Crescent 
 must give way to the Cross the mosque must one day 
 resound with the Name, and shine with the glories, of 
 Jesus. That river whose streams make glad the city of 
 our God, shall flow where Euphrates has long rolled its 
 flood. " There is one God," will then, as now, be the 
 Turkish faith ; but there will be this, to its professors, 
 new and happy addition " and Christ is the brightness 
 of His glory, and the express image of His person." 
 The decay and waning is almost complete ; the day also 
 of its regeneration cannot be far distant. 
 
 Thus, then, the wasting and removal of the Maho- 
 metan power will be contemporaneous with, or will 
 precede, the movement of the Jews to their long-lost 
 land their gathering home to Jerusalem once more, in 
 new and glorious circumstances. The facts of the day 
 are the literal fulfilment of this prophecy : the interest 
 felt throughout Christendom in the Jews the excite- 
 ments and kindling hopes of which they are almost
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 389 
 
 universally the subjects the growing political as well 
 as religious importance of Palestine all indicate the 
 preparation of the way of " the kings of the east." 
 
 The present existence of the Jews is perhaps a chief 
 sign of the times in which we live. Their very being is 
 a miracle. Like their bush on Mount Horeb, they 
 have survived amid the burning flames of incessant per- 
 secution. The names of Athenian, Roman, Theban, 
 Spartan, live in the records of the past only, their ex- 
 istence is registered on their tombstones ; but the Jew 
 walks every street, speaks and dwells in every capital, 
 transacts this world's business on every exchange, and 
 relieves the monotony of the nations by his presence, as 
 that of an Eastern and unincorporated family. They are 
 reft indeed of the Urim and Thummim, the mitre, and the 
 glory on the altar, and the overshadowing cherubim, and 
 the Temple of Jerusalem, their joy ; but they themselves 
 remain distinct, and incapable of amalgamation with the 
 tribes and kindred of the earth. Like streams from 
 some remote fountain whose waters are of strange and 
 characteristic flavour, they have rolled along the succes- 
 sive centuries of time without blending with contempo- 
 raneous or even opposing floods. The Jewish nation is 
 at this day the most striking seal of the truth of the 
 sacred oracles. There is no accounting for their per- 
 petuated isolation their depressed but indestructible 
 existence, on any principles save those revealed in the 
 word of God. They have been sprinkled like millions 
 of globules of quicksilver over the length and breadth of 
 the world, every drop incapable of absorption, and all des- 
 tined to coalesce and reflect bright beams upon the past, 
 and mirroring forth the morning of a glorious future. 
 
 Avarice, prejudice, superstition, have all in turn ex- 
 pended their violence upon them ; they have been arbi- 
 trarily charged with monstrous crimes as pretexts for 
 plundering them. They have been described as mon- 
 sters that they might be plundered. No means have been 
 deemed too base, if they served to enrich the Gentile at 
 the expense of the Jew. During the middle ages they 
 were proscribed the ordinary streets and dwelling-places
 
 390 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of the Gentiles assigned distinct municipal localities, 
 treated as a mean and ignoble caste, deprived of civil 
 rights, massacred in popular outbursts, by decrees of 
 councils, and by royal rescripts. They were occasionally 
 baptized by force : the bribe, the faggot, the prison 
 all were made to bear on their conversion, absorption, 
 or extinction and all have failed. There are still left 
 upwards of three millions of Jews waiting for the Mes- 
 siah. How is this ? Geography, arms, politics, do not 
 explain the mystery of their existence ; time, climate, 
 customs, do not unravel it. They are found under the 
 regime of every dynasty, sharing the protection of just 
 laws, and enduring the proscription of cruel ones, 
 using every tongue, and living in every latitude. The 
 snows of Lapland chill them, and the suns of Africa 
 scorch them. They drink of the Tiber and the Thames, 
 the Jordan and the Mississippi. The wreck of Israel 
 still stands in sublime misery. On the one hand they 
 are characterized by meanness, approaching to dis- 
 honesty Mammon their god, and money their con- 
 stant meditation ; and on the other hand they look 
 backwards along many thousand years to an ancestry, 
 beside which that of our peers and princes is but of 
 yesterday and press forward on the wings of hope to a 
 long-expected day, when they shall exchange the degra- 
 dation of Helots for the dignity of a royal priesthood. 
 The race is a perpetual miracle, evidence of a God, the 
 reluctant and living Amen to the truth of the promises 
 and predictions of Scripture. What is equally re- 
 markable, they have in their darkest hours cherished the 
 love of literature as well as the hopes of the Fathers. 
 This must have resulted mainly from the ardent attach- 
 ment they have ever cherished to their Sacred Books. 
 Their faith is enshrined in the richest literature ; their 
 dearest hope is embalmed in the songs of David, and the 
 strains of Isaiah. The paths that lead to their God are 
 strewn with the choicest flowers. The very hosannahs 
 they raise weekly to the God of Abraham, are couched 
 in the most thrilling, because inspired poetry. But per- 
 haps the first circumstance that drew attention to them
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 391 
 
 not long ago were the events at Damascus in 1842. The 
 Papacy charged on certain Jews in that town the murder 
 of Padre Tomaso, a Capuchin monk, for purposes Jews 
 ever have abhorred. Ten or twelve of the chief Jew 
 merchants of Damascus were subjected to every degree 
 of torture, and some of them to death, the Pacha and 
 the French consul seeking to extort from innocence a 
 confession of guilt. The Emperor of Russia has felt it 
 necessary to deal with the state of the Jews. Pius IX. 
 has unexpectedly mitigated the severity of their lot in 
 Rome. Germany is agitated with the Jewish question. 
 It is the question of the day in Britain. Right or 
 wrong, the Prime Minister has introduced a bill into 
 Parliament, which will give the Jew a place among the 
 Gentiles he never had in this country before. 
 
 Whenever we behold a Jew, we see a monument of the 
 righteous anger, and a memorial of the unchangeable 
 truth of the Almighty. They are the scattered, death- 
 less, and reluctant witnesses to Christianity the cruci- 
 fiers of her Lord, and yet the credentials of His glory. 
 They tried to crush Christianity in her cradle, but they 
 only raised her to the chariot of her triumphs, and gave 
 the first impulse to her progress. They still reject the 
 religion of the Messiah, and yet they are the living 
 evidences of His majesty their silence is powerful 
 eloquence their resistance to truth their ablest apology. 
 The judgments that light upon them on the plains of 
 Babylon on the sands of Senegal on the banks of the 
 Jordan or on the shores of the Caspian Sea are as 
 intimations from on high, telling to a sceptic world that 
 they are the men of destiny the world's emphatic 
 phenomena Heaven's trumpet-tongued prophets, re- 
 cording afresh to each successive generation the truths 
 of creation the deluge the cross ; reflecting on each 
 new light, and on all together new harmony, and throw- 
 ing forward into the dark region of the future, rays that 
 unfold a panorama of grandeur and magnificence too 
 vivid for man's unpurged eye to dwell upon. On that 
 poor avaricious Jew there rests a curse, no doubt ; but 
 that curse conceals the roots of a sublime consummation.
 
 392 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 The race is clothed in the mean rags of the slave, but is 
 associated, nevertheless, in the promises of Truth, with 
 the heritage and the royalties of an endless sovereignty. 
 
 But however inflexible may be the purposes of Provi- 
 dence with reference to the sufferings of the Jews, it is 
 surely not the duty of Christians to become the exe- 
 cutioners of the curse which has been denounced upon 
 them. We are called upon to obey precepts, not to 
 fulfil prophecies. He who inspired the prophecy will 
 secure its fulfilment. And so far is it from being the 
 duty of any of the followers of the Christian faith to 
 attempt to pour forth upon the Jews the vials which 
 have been destined for them in the mysterious pur- 
 poses of Heaven, that, on the contrary, special punish- 
 ments are denounced on those who " help forward the 
 affliction" of that people; and it would not be very 
 difficult to prove that those very nations which have 
 made themselves most infamous by the persecutions they 
 have inflicted on the Jew, have been visited with the 
 most signal and wasting judgments. The Protestant 
 Church has pleaded and toiled for them. It has been 
 the unenviable distinction of Rome, to have persecuted 
 them root and branch to have danced round the 
 fires that burned them, and to have gloried in the 
 murderous cruelty, as if it were acceptable to God. 
 Russia, imitating with almost undistinguishable minute- 
 ness the creed of Rome, seems lately to have begun to 
 copy her practices also. Nicholas will not be behind 
 Ferdinand and Isabella. If the Emperor be sensitive to 
 public opinion, he may yet change his purposes, and 
 revoke his exterminating mandate. But if too high to 
 be reached by the waves of popular feeling if too 
 callous to be penetrated by the cry of the oppressed, the 
 appeals of the injured he may one day find that the 
 throne of All the Russias is not beyond the reach of the 
 judgments of Heaven, nor royalty itself irresponsible at 
 that bar at which no appeals can be received. 
 
 Some think these unjustifiable and successive perse- 
 cutions which the Jews have lately experienced, are 
 meant to loosen their hold of the various countries in
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 393 
 
 which they have found a temporary asylum or pursued 
 a profitable traffic, preparatory to that sublime signal 
 which shall lead them back again to the land of Judah ; 
 like the ancient wilderness-pillar, kindling the night by its 
 beams, and cooling the noontide by its shade. If true, 
 the prospect is a glorious one. They will praise in the 
 streets of Jerusalem, Him their forefathers persecuted 
 enthrone on Mount Moriah the Man of Sorrows as the 
 Mighty God, and crown as the King of Glory, on 
 Golgotha, Him whom they crucified between two thieves, 
 as the guiltiest of the three. Perhaps a Christian bishop 
 in the heart of Jerusalem the horror of the "Puseyite" 
 and the scorn of the sceptic may be a forelight of the 
 approaching outburst an early star to indicate the 
 nearness of the new day the presage of the long-pre- 
 dicted morn. The increased outward oppression of the 
 Jew may thus be the token of the proximity of his 
 deliverance. If it be so, the prospect will thus give 
 him patience. The tyrant may confine his body, or 
 crush his limbs, or spoil him of his goods ; but he 
 cannot extinguish hopes of celestial origin, or impede a 
 destiny which is linked to Omnipotence itself, or blight 
 one flower or blast one acre of that true Canaan which 
 would seem to be theirs in reversion. 
 
 I anticipate, then, the restoration of the Jews to their 
 fatherland, and that, too, speedily. Many texts are 
 my witnesses here. Nor is it in vain that their hopes 
 still converge, and kindle as they converge, from a 
 thousand points to Jerusalem ; and that their affections 
 nestle, even amidst its ruins, as in their beloved and 
 congenial home. It is true there is much superstition 
 associated with their veneration for the city of David ; 
 but there is also much that is truly significant. Not a 
 few of the Jews believe, that every Israelite that dies 
 out of Jerusalem must perform a subterranean passage 
 back to it, that he may rise at the last day ; and that 
 to die in Jerusalem is certain salvation, and that the 
 Rabbis in the midst of it are still inspired. There is 
 one part of the ruins which the Jews are allowed to 
 approach ; and every Friday evening, when the Jewish
 
 394 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Sabbath begins, numbers of their most venerable Rabbis 
 kneel amidst the debris, and kiss the stones, and breathe 
 prayers through the crevices ; believing that their sup- 
 plications are specially heard on that ground, of which 
 Jehovah has said, " Mine eyes and my heart shall be 
 there perpetually." Many of the stones are worn smooth 
 with the tears and kisses of these exiles of Judah. There 
 is something in all this very impressive. Than this, 
 the captives on the banks of the Euphrates did not 
 present a more touching spectacle, nor do the words of 
 the Psalm, " Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, 
 and favour the dust thereof," receive a more striking 
 illustration. The outcasts of Jerusalem cling to its 
 ruins, and cherish its very dust. Like ivy plants, they 
 announce the wreck, while they labour to arrest it. 
 How rooted is Judaism in the heart of a Jew ! what 
 terrible assaults has it withstood ! what fiery elements 
 has it survived ! Satan has corrupted it, indeed, but he 
 has not conquered it. He has overshadowed it with 
 superstition, but he has not destroyed it. Even after 
 the lapse of eighteen centuries, bright sparks of the live 
 glory start up at intervals from the encompassing rub- 
 bish rays of the Shechinah occasionally leap, like 
 lightning splendours, athwart the clouded canopy which 
 once glowed with stars as the city of God. There are 
 traces of divinity legible still in Zion, Moriah, and Cal- 
 vary ; and shaded and obscured, the " pillar of fire by 
 night, and the pillar of cloud by day," walks the streets 
 of dismantled Jerusalem these are signs and gleams, 
 too, of the twilight that ushers in Israel's endless noon, 
 significant of its approaching glory. Josephus asserts, 
 there were heard, in the days of Vespasian, awful and 
 mysterious cries in the holy place of the temple of Jeru- 
 salem, "Let us go hence," as if the voice of the departing 
 God. May it not be, that the tidings which have lately 
 come so often from Judea, are the deepening echoes of 
 the returning footsteps of Jehovah to reign over all 
 the earth to close the days of Zion's mourning to 
 shine before His ancients gloriously to rekindle on 
 Mount Zion that pyramid of light that shall flame to
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 395 
 
 heaven, and wrap Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, 
 in one glorious apocalypse ? Many and multiplying are 
 the signs of its appearing. 
 
 There can be no doubt that a new era in the history 
 of Israel has arrived. The Church of England has now 
 built a Christian church on the very ruins of the temple 
 in Mount Zion, where they found layers of stone so 
 large that these ancient foundations are now the found- 
 ations of a Christian temple ; and the words of the 
 sublime liturgy of that Church " O Lamb of God, that 
 takest away the sins of the world," shall soon be heard 
 in Zion. On the Rock of Ages, and amid the lingering 
 shadows of Levi, there will soon arise a second and more 
 glorious fane, vocal with perpetual melody. Its walls, 
 the attributes of God its cement, redeeming love ; with 
 no need of sun or moon, for " the Lord God Almighty 
 and the Lamb are the light thereof." The Church of 
 Scotland became, as by an impulse from on high, so 
 impressed with this great subject, that she sent a deputa- 
 tion of clergy and laity to search out and report the 
 present state, hopes, and accessibility of the Jews. I 
 need not at length refer to their most interesting Report. 
 One fact, however, they found every where the same : 
 it is, that the Jews can be preached to in every country. 
 The Dissenters of London have also lately formed a 
 Society for the Conversion of the Jews. Thus all classes 
 begin to be interested in God's ancient people. 
 
 In Tuscany and Leghorn, and other parts of Italy, a 
 Protestant missionary dare not preach to the Romanists. 
 The proclamation of the gospel in these countries, the 
 circulation of Tracts, the distribution of Bibles, are all 
 visited with pains and penalties ; but in every one of 
 them any missionary may preach to the Jews. 
 
 In Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey any attempt to 
 proselytize the Mahometan population would be visited 
 with death or exile ; but in all these lands, in Tyre also 
 and Sidon, Sychar, Tiberias, and Acre, the deputation 
 of our Church found unfettered opportunities of address- 
 ing the stray sheep of the house of Israel. 
 
 In the bazaars, and other places of traffic, a missionary
 
 396 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 may stand every day and preach to hundreds of deeply 
 interested and attentive Jews. In Wallachia and Mol- 
 davia, and other provinces of the Greek empire, there is 
 the same easy access to the children of Abraham. 
 
 In Cracow there are upwards of 20,000 Jews ; and 
 though a missionary dare not speak on their fatal errors 
 to the Papal population, to all these Jews he may speak 
 freely. A wide door, and effectual, is palpably open. 
 This pleads their cause better than eloquence. I do not 
 expect the Jews to be converted piece-meal. Portions 
 of the race will appear at intervals as seals to ministerial 
 toils, and monuments that God has not forsaken them ; 
 and I feel it one of the sweetest recollections in my 
 ministry, that I had the high privilege of baptizing a 
 Jew brought to the knowledge of the truth in my own 
 church ; and that recollection is deepened by the fact, 
 that he has since sacrificed all for Christ. I believe they 
 will be converted in a day, and as a nation ; but whether 
 before or at the second personal advent of Christ, I am 
 unable to say. It is a remarkable fact, that a portion of 
 the Holy Land is at this moment the subject of national 
 dispute to Russia, France, and Britain. Turkey even 
 gives toleration to the Jews. All confirm one convic- 
 tion, that we are now at the verge of the pouring out of 
 the Seventh Vial. Our children, if not we ourselves, are 
 destined to see events and manifestations which sceptics 
 may sneer at, and even reluctant Christians undervalue ; 
 but thereby they only confirm the truth, " For as it was 
 in the days of Noah, so shall it 1be at the Advent of the 
 Son of Man." " Behold, I come as a thief," is the watch- 
 word of the present hour. God grant " the Lamb's 
 wife" may make herself ready ! 
 
 The wasting of the Turkish power, the position of 
 Egypt, the state of Europe, the feeling of the Jews in 
 Poland and in Constantinople, all prognosticate no ordin- 
 ary epoch. The hour is at our door when the nation 
 of the Jews shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
 live. Like streams from a thousand lands they shall roll 
 towards Jerusalem, there to testify against the mur- 
 derous deeds of their misguided fathers, and to weep
 
 THE SIXTH VIAL. 397 
 
 at the remembrance of the evil spell of infatuation that 
 bound them. The glory that dwelt between the cherubim 
 shall be re-kindled, never to expire. The " Lamb slain 
 from the foundation of the world" shall be hailed as 
 their quickening hope. The Everlasting Priest shall sit 
 upon the throne of David, walk the pavements, and 
 watch over the reclaimed tribes of Palestine. In every 
 country the Jews are more or less loosened, preparatory 
 to their mighty march ; and the foreshadows of their 
 approaching resurrection lie both broad and deep upon 
 the face of Europe. Jerusalem itself has become an ob- 
 ject of political arrangement among the Gentiles. The 
 apathy with which politicians, patriots, and even Chris- 
 tians looked upon the Jew has been broken up. They 
 command the attention and the intervention of imperial 
 cabinets of consuls, diplomatists, and statesmen. The 
 dry bones, exceeding many and exceeding dry, begin to 
 be stirred in a thousand valleys ; and nations that once 
 stood neutral, or positively hostile, wait and marvel what 
 will be the upshot. The throes of a great birth are 
 already felt. The groans of Judaism and the travail of 
 Christianity indicate the approach of great things. A cycle 
 in the high purposes of God draws to its accomplish- 
 ment. The prediction shall be literally fulfilled : " Then 
 the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have com- 
 passion on thee, and will return and gather thee from all 
 nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. 
 If any of them be driven out to the uttermost parts of 
 heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee; 
 and the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which 
 thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it." Most 
 glorious consummation ! The widowed land of Judah 
 shall soon meet the everlasting Husband. The weary- 
 footed wanderers of Salem are near their perpetual rest. 
 The first sounds of the last Jubilee are already caught 
 from afar. The very wrecks of Jerusalem repose in the 
 sunshine of a beauteous resurrection. Golgotha shall be 
 made glad, and Calvary itself exchange its association 
 with the Cross for the possession of the Crown. The 
 air that was once rent with " Crucify him, crucify him,"
 
 398 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 shall resound with " Hosanna to the Son of David." The 
 very scenes where Jesus suffered, and was spit on and 
 shamed, shall witness Rabbis, and priests, and people 
 exalting his name above every name, and glorying in the 
 Cross as the cradle of their better being. Mount Carmel 
 shall echo back to Mount Zion the joyful sound. The 
 cedars of Lebanon shall rejoice; and the face of Jordan 
 reflect to the face of heaven, " Mercy and truth which 
 have met together ; righteousness and peace which have 
 kissed each other." If we are the children of Abraham, 
 we too shall share in their joy, and be fellow heirs with 
 them of the inheritance of the saints in light.
 
 LECTURE XXL 
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 
 (THE SIXTH VIAL CONTINUED.) 
 
 " And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth 
 of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the 
 mouth of the false prophet. 
 
 " For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go 
 forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to 
 gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. 
 
 " Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and 
 keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his 
 shame." REV. xvi. 13 15. 
 
 WE have two great duties to discharge in the Church 
 of Christ. The minister of the gospel is not only to 
 show himself a pastor to feed the sheep, but he is bound 
 also to make good his claim to the office of the watch- 
 man, to defend the fold from the wolf. It is not merely 
 his duty to minister nutriment to the saints of God and 
 this is his most pleasant duty, or rather his privilege 
 but it is also his office, however painful, to awaken atten- 
 tion, by every means in his power, to the perils that loom 
 in the distance, to analyze the principles of threatening 
 mischief, and to expose the poison that lurks under the 
 most plausible garb, lest those who are safe should be, 
 in the least degree, contaminated or injured, and that 
 those who are without the fold may not be carried away 
 beyond recovery by some fatal or mischievous delusion. 
 This evening I must act the part of the watchman, J 
 must tell you of peril in earnest of poison mingled with 
 the living bread of danger. 
 
 We have arrived at the close of the era in which we 
 now live ; the prophecy I have read depicts the hour 
 that sweeps by. The Turkish dynasty, as I have told
 
 400 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 you, wastes and wanes ; and, if the data which I have 
 assumed be true, the utter waning of the Crescent would 
 seem to take place two or three years hence. I have 
 shown you that the way of the "kings of the East" will 
 then be free ; so that we may live to witness the august 
 and impressive spectacle of the Jews, shaking loose from 
 every land, and moving like the pillar of cloud by day 
 and the pillar of flame by night, a procession of glory and 
 beauty, to the land of their fathers that land that cleaves 
 closest of all sublunary things to their memory, and 
 vibrates with their heart-strings to which the Jew 
 looks in the nineteenth century as David looked centu- 
 ries before, as to the Land of Promise, then the beauty 
 and the joy of the whole earth. But whilst this process 
 is going on, on the one hand namely, the wasting of the 
 Mahometan power ; and whilst the way of the " kings 
 of the East" is preparing, on the other hand; we are 
 told that three unclean spirits are to go forth from their 
 respective sources ; which are to contaminate the kings 
 and nations of the earth, and prepare them for that last 
 and final earthquake which precedes the winding up of 
 the destinies of that drama in which we play so solemn 
 and so responsible a part. 
 
 The nature of these spirits, or the principles which they 
 infuse, we must determine plainly by the source from 
 which they are here alleged to spring. I say the class 
 and character of these "unclean spirits like frogs" we 
 are to define by examining the source from which they 
 arise. The first, wf> are told, comes from the dragon. I 
 need not refer you to my previous lectures, where I 
 showed that the dragon is Satan in his own character, 
 animating the infidel, pagan, and heathen world the 
 undisguised devil the archangel fallen. From Satan 
 in this form, and so inspired by Satanic wickedness, the 
 first unclean spirit proceeds. We may therefore infer 
 that this undisguised Satanic spirit proceeding from 
 the dragon, is the infidel or sceptic spirit. The second 
 unclean spirit is to proceed from the beast, or the 
 "wild beast" that rose from the abyss the symbol of 
 the great head of the Apostacy, the Popes of Rome.
 
 THE TIIKEE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 401 
 
 We may infer, therefore, that the second unclean spirit 
 is Popery. The third unclean spirit proceeds from the 
 false prophet. I showed you that the false prophet, or 
 the lamb-like beast the beast that looked like a lamb, 
 and spake as a dragon was no other than the Romish 
 clergy, or priesthood, as distinct from the Pope, and act- 
 ing, as I showed you in a previous lecture, in their own 
 strength and incorporate capacity. We may therefore 
 expect that this unclean spirit is the spirit of the priest- 
 hood, or Puseyism. For what is Puseyism ? Popery 
 without a Pope the antichristian spirit and pretensions 
 of Popery without the supremacy of its antichristian 
 head, or ruler, the Pope. 
 
 Having thus, then, ascertained what these three unclean 
 spirits are, let me now proceed to show you the scenes 
 and evidences of their action. This, of course, must be 
 on a very limited scale ; I can do no more than hint to 
 sources of information. Time would fail me fully to un- 
 fold them. 
 
 The spirit of the DRAGON is the first of these three 
 spirits. He fell from heaven by pride, or claiming to 
 live and act in antagonism to or independently of God. 
 The influence of this spirit showed itself in the conduct 
 of the antediluvians when they cast off the fear and wor- 
 ship of God ; it developed itself long previously in Cain, 
 the fratricide ; and it still shows itself, wherever it ex- 
 ists, either in living without God, or living in antagon- 
 ism to God. This infidel spirit is very often proved, in 
 the history of the world, to be the cori^lativ^ of Roman- 
 ism. History shows that wheresoever Popery has been 
 rampant the one century, infidelity has come to be su- 
 preme in the next. The one blasts the fair, the green, 
 and the beautiful with its baleful fires the other lives 
 in the space it has thus withered and blasted, as in a 
 congenial home. Hence Popery and Infidelity, though 
 they look like the antipodes to the eye, soon make it 
 known, nevertheless, that, like Milton's Sin and Death, 
 when they have met and compared notes, that they are 
 sisters in affinity, in affection, in arms, and rivals only 
 in renown. 
 
 I will first show evidence of the presence of Infidelity 
 2 D
 
 402 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 in its strict sense, not as opposition to God, but as living 
 without God. The first scene of its action to which I 
 will refer is the great city in which we live, and of 
 which we are, at present, either the natives or the citi- 
 zens. We call England a Christian country, and we 
 speak of London as the metropolis of a Christian land, 
 but it has been found that there are more true Christians 
 in some of the distant isles of the sea, to which we send 
 missionaries, comparatively with their population, than 
 there are even in London, the centre of civilization, and 
 the mighty spi'ing of those influences that influence the 
 earth. I state, as too plain evidence of this, such facts 
 as have been brought to light and detailed at length by 
 that most valuable institution, the London City Mission. 
 It first brought prominently before the Christian public 
 the fearful moral state of subterranean strata not believed 
 to exist before. Within a radius of eight miles of St. 
 Paul's cathedral there are about two millions of people, 
 the largest population ever assembled within the limits 
 of a city. If all the churches and chapels Protestant, 
 Established, Dissenting, Roman Catholic, and Socinian 
 were as full as they could hold, there would not be 
 within them one-fourth of that mighty population. But 
 not only are the churches and chapels of London, as a 
 whole, not full, but if you take them at any time I will 
 not take them at the present time, when, I am told, they 
 are nearly empty, in consequence of the prevalent epi- 
 demic but if I take them at a season when the weather 
 is fine, and the public health good, and every thing is fa- 
 vourable, you will find the average attendance to be each 
 only about one-fourth full. If that be the average, the 
 result will be that there are never more in church on 
 one Sunday, in all denominations, than, if I take the 
 largest, about 200,000 people out of a population of two 
 millions. And how many, do you think, of that number 
 are communicants ? Startling fact ! awful stain upon the 
 missionary zeal the aggressive efforts of the metropolis ! 
 there are scarcely 60,000 communicants in all the 
 churches and chapels of this vast city put together ! 
 There are only 60,000 who so far profess the gospel as 
 to avail themselves of the opportunity of commemorating
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 403 
 
 the dying love, and receiving the pledges of the second 
 advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. So true is this, that 
 the steamboats and the railways alone carry from the 
 metropolis every Sunday morning a greater population 
 than all the churches and chapels together any one day 
 contain. 
 
 Out of the population of London, there are, it is cal- 
 culated, nearly 200,000 Roman Catholics ; and these 
 Roman Catholics, let me tell you, are not, like many of 
 you professing Protestants, mere shams men that have 
 the form of their faith, but not its power nor its reality : 
 these Roman Catholics are thorough ones ; they are in 
 earnest they are prepared to die themselves or to burn 
 you, just as may be expedient or convenient in the exi- 
 gency. In other words, they are thoroughly in earnest ; 
 and to cope with these nearly 200,000 Roman Catholics, 
 we have about 60,000 Protestants only who can be as- 
 sumed in charity to be vitally impressed with the gos- 
 pel, and devoted to its spread, and ready to live for 
 Christ and die for him, if needs be. 
 
 In the next place, the state and employments and 
 character of the out-population are truly distressing. 
 There are in London 12,000 children trained profes- 
 sionally to pick pockets, with the greatest tact, speed, 
 and success, or to plunder houses with the best chance 
 of escape. The schools for these children are lamentably 
 defective ! I do say that our schools are our greatest 
 disgrace. I do feel that while we are sending money 
 abroad and far be it from me to attempt to shut or re- 
 press missionary effort but, while we are sending 
 money to the ends of the earth, for the conversion of the 
 Turk, the Heathen, and the Jew, I do feel that we are not 
 concentrating an adequate or corresponding expenditure 
 at our own doors, and on our own perishing population. 
 There are in London 3000 receivers of stolen property ; 
 4000 are annually committed for crimes ; there are 
 10,000 gamblers ; 20,000 live by begging ; there are 
 30,000 regular thieves in London ; there are 150,000 
 habitual gin-drinkers, a melancholy fact surely ! I do not 
 know what is the best remedy for this ; sometimes I 
 have thought our teetotal friends are right ; sometimes 
 2 D 2
 
 404 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 I have doubted whether to agree with them or not ; I do 
 feel, however, that he is not acting wisely who tries to 
 crush a machinery which, \vhether as perfect in its struc- 
 ture and constituent elements as might be, or otherwise, 
 is achieving great physical and moral good. Again, 
 there are in London 150,000 of both sexes, who lead a 
 life of debauchery and licentiousness. Thus there is a 
 greater number of ostensibly depraved and abandoned 
 characters in the service of Satan, than there are during 
 Sunday in the house of prayer. This great city sends 
 annually a million of money for the conversion of the 
 ends of the earth, and rightly so, but alas, there are 
 millions more needed for the conversion of the popu- 
 lation at home. And, melancholy and painful spectacle ! 
 in the midst of this scene of demoralization, ignorance, 
 and crime, the ministers of the everlasting gospel are 
 found quarrelling and disputing with each other about 
 details of discipline and forms of worship, just as if the 
 captain and crew should fall to quarrelling in a ship 
 which is sinking inch by inch in the fathomless abyss, 
 or as if the inmates of a house were to begin to quarrel 
 about the dress they should wear, while every rafter and 
 timber is blazing in the flames of an irresistible confla- 
 gration. I do sincerely hope, that the ministers of the 
 everlasting gospel will more and more merge their 
 ecclesiastical disputes, or, if not merge them, postpone 
 them for decision till the millennium ; and, in the mean 
 time, consecrate that strength and energy, which they 
 waste in internal quarrels, in the evangelization of our 
 lands, the reclamation of the drunkard, the sanctification 
 of the guilty, the salvation of perishing souls. 
 
 I have thus spoken of infidelity in its form " Avithout 
 God," let me now speak of it as " against God." I have 
 spoken of the a-theism, let me now allude to the anti- 
 theism of London. Thousands of young men are specu- 
 lative infidels not by the conviction of their minds, but 
 by the pressure of their consciences. They will not lead 
 the life prescribed by God's holy law, and they therefore 
 try to get rid of the sense of the inspection of God's 
 omniscient eye. Like the frog they live in unclean- 
 ness, like the frog they croak infidelity in chorus, and
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 405 
 
 like the frog they dread the approach of that light 
 which discovers and disquiets them. Instead of the re- 
 jection of Christianity being the evidence of a gifted 
 mind, it is always, in my judgment, the symptom of a 
 diseased heart. No man who believes he has discovered 
 that this blessed book is a lie, would speak lightly of 
 that discovery. He would make known such a dis- 
 covery with tears, and in solemn sorrow. Yet no man, 
 let me add, who has either weighed the evidence on 
 which it rests, or studied its glorious truths, can come to 
 the conclusion that it is a lie. I was tainted while at the 
 University by this spirit of scepticism. I thought Chris- 
 tianity might not be true. The very possibility of its 
 being true was the thought I felt I must meet and settle. 
 Conscience could give me no peace till I had settled it. I 
 read, and I have read from that day for fourteen or fifteen 
 years, till this, and now I am as convinced, upon the 
 clearest evidence, that this book is the book of God, as 
 that I now address you, or that you now hear me : it 
 bears upon its brow the imprimatur of Divinity the 
 signature of its Author the autograph of Deity, and the 
 man that reads it most thoroughly, and understands it 
 most clearly, is the man who will come to the conclusion, 
 to which the good, and the gifted, and the wise of past 
 generations have come, that it has God for its Author 
 truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter 
 eternal happiness for its glorious issue. I may be speak- 
 ing to not a few sceptics in this assembly. Let me show 
 you what was the ci'oaking of a great arch-frog, if I may 
 use the expression, who led the other unclean spirits of 
 his day into the marshes in which he himself wallowed. 
 I refer to the gifted David Hume. Hear what he says 
 in his book on Human Nature I read from vol. i. page 
 458. " I seem," says Hume, " affrighted and confounded 
 with the solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy. 
 When I look abroad, on every side I see dispute, con- 
 tradiction, distraction. When I turn my eye inward, I 
 find nothing but doubt and ignorance. Where am I ? or, 
 what am I ? from what cause do I derive my existence ? 
 to what condition shall I return ? I am confounded with 
 these questions. I begin to fancy myself in a most de-
 
 406 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 plorable condition, environed with the deepest darkness 
 on every side." Such is a specimen of the croaking of 
 that frog. Hear also the croaking of another arch-frog, 
 equally gifted, but not so fastidious in his mode of ex- 
 pressing himself I mean Voltaire. " The world," says 
 he, " abounds with wonders, and also with victims. In 
 man is more wretchedness than in all other animals put 
 together." How did he judge of it ? by his own heart. 
 He adds : " Man loves life, yet knows he must die ; 
 spends his existence in diffusing the miseries which he 
 has suffered cutting the throats of his fellow creatures 
 for pay cheating and being cheated. The bulk of man- 
 kind are nothing more than a crowd of wretches, equally 
 criminal, equally unfortunate. I wish I had never been 
 born ! " So said Voltaire : such is the creed of this un- 
 clean spirit. Such is the happiness revealed in scep- 
 ticism. Listen to these words : " I have fought the 
 good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the 
 faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
 righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall 
 give me at that day." What a contrast ! can you hesitate 
 which to adopt ? Does not every heart in this assembly 
 address the professor and the personator of such a creed 
 as the last " Where thou goest I will go, where thou 
 lodgest I will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and 
 thy God my God ! " 
 
 I have thus spoken, first of the scepticism that lives 
 without God ; and next, of the scepticism that lives in 
 antagonism to God ; but I wish to remark, in addition 
 to all I have said, that the scepticism we have to fear in 
 the present day, is not the dry, metaphysical scepticism 
 of Hume or of Voltaire. The unclean spirit adapts its 
 development to circumstances. The fact is, man is not a 
 mere creature of intellect ; he cannot live on logic. He 
 needs more than syllogisms can furnish. Abstract infi- 
 delity is a cold icicle a petrifaction an empty nega- 
 tive. Man has Avithin him a power that reasons, in its 
 most solemn moments, of death and judgment and eter- 
 nity ; and all the logic that was ever chopped all the syl- 
 logisms that were ever spun must fail to give peace to 
 the conscience in which the peace of God has not been
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 407 
 
 planted by the God of peace. I feel, therefore, that meta- 
 physical scepticism, unless it be with some very metaphy- 
 sical spirits, has the least possible chance of a wide 
 influence or permanent hold on human nature. Satan 
 knows this, and therefore now-a-days he decks it in mere- 
 tricious finery makes scepticism palatable by gilding it 
 with sensuous charms fitting it to men's passions as well 
 as convictions ; and thus securing for the unclean spirit 
 a more easy and powerful access to the corrupt human 
 heart. Hence I look upon the sensuous Philosophy of 
 France, the Pantheism of Germany and America, and 
 the Socialism and Chartism and Communism* of Eng- 
 land very much crushed, I believe, but still too domin- 
 ant in some of its secret and more sequestered haunts 
 to be modern developments of this frog from the mouth 
 of the Dragon or Satan. I refer to Socialism not so 
 much for its repudiation of the Bible, as for its assault 
 upon the very structure and vitals of the social system. 
 It thwarts the spread of Christianity by keeping its 
 victims out of its reach. 
 
 I one day visited a Socialist hall : I found in it the 
 keeper only, none of the company were present. I 
 found he Avas a countryman of my own, and labouring 
 under a disease that was carrying him to the tomb. I 
 spoke gently to him of his position ; I tried to converse 
 with him about things unseen and eternal. I put this 
 question to him, at last, You have cast off Christianity, 
 let me ask you, are you now happy ? and, with a candour 
 that did him credit, he declared he was a wretched and 
 miserable man. So, my dear friends, it ever will be. If 
 I address some young man in this assembly trying to 
 make blinds of scepticism in order to keep the light of 
 God's truth from his conscience, I tell him he merely 
 puts off while he increases the terrible reaction of the 
 evil day : you know, young man, that it will not do. 
 You feel that Christianity may be true you are not yet 
 satisfied that your disproof of God's truth is conclusive. 
 You have a feeling and presentiment within you a pre- 
 sentiment that is a pulse from the very ocean of eternity 
 
 * A strong proof of the infidel character of Chartism, is its hold- 
 ing its public political meetings on the Sunday.
 
 408 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 that there is before you a judgment-seat, a death, and 
 a righteous retribution. So long as you are not satisfied 
 that your disproof of Christianity is conclusive, so long 
 you must tremble. The very suspicion that the book 
 which describes your state, and declares your doom, may 
 be true, must banish all peace from your heart. I refer, 
 however, to Socialism, as I have stated, not so much for 
 its repudiation of Scripture, as for the peculiar form of 
 assault which it directs. It has attacked, and attacked 
 most vehemently, what I conceive to be, next to the 
 gospel, and what is a fruit of the gospel, the greatest 
 cement of all that distinguishes civilized humanity, of 
 all that makes our homes and our families to be happy. 
 It has levelled its most desperate assaults against the rite 
 and institution of marriage. "It is," says an arch- 
 socialist, " a Satanic institution." " It is," says the same 
 frog, " the source of more demoralization, crime, and 
 mischief, than any other single cause, with the excep- 
 tion of religion ! and of property." Now, were the spirit 
 of the demon that here breaks forth to overflow the land, 
 were this frog to increase and multiply, and gain the 
 ascendency in our land, it needs no prophet to predict 
 what would follow. Woman, who is at once the charm 
 and the ornament of society, whom Christianity has 
 enfranchised, whose greatest glories are borrowed, not 
 from scepticism, or from nature, but from the gospel, 
 would become so degraded and so crushed beneath its 
 withering influence, that she would long for the grave as 
 her only respite from the cruelty of the brute visited on 
 the sensibilities of the woman. Home, that word which 
 the English tongue claims as peculiarly English, home, 
 the very utterance of which is replete with music, 
 would cease to be what it has been amongst us, the fair- 
 est spot on earth the shrine and the sanctuary of holy 
 and happy sympathy. Children, caressing and caressed, 
 would only be the cattle impounded in this new Socialist 
 system responsibilities and paternal and maternal cares 
 would cease and out of the ruins of these sacred rela- 
 tionships would evolve, not grave men and chaste women, 
 and happy homes, but the harem in the circles of the 
 rich houses of infamy in the habitations of the poor ;
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 409 
 
 and Society, like a rope of sand, Avithdrawn from its 
 compressing elements, would fall to pieces. 
 
 I wish I could say that the press was, in all its de- 
 partments, pure. The weekly issue of ungodly and un- 
 clean publications is beyond belief. There is a vast 
 amount of infidel literature current in some, and even 
 the choicest portions of the press lack much of the spirit 
 of the gospel. I do feel the vast importance of the press, 
 and I am quite sure that if the apostle Paul were living, 
 he would lay hold upon the press as well as occupy the 
 pulpit. If I address any one in this assembly whose 
 duty it is to wield this powerful engine this sovereignty 
 which is mightier than the sceptres of monarchs this 
 element which makes opinions, and thus moulds and 
 shapes the laws I beseech you to consider the frightful 
 responsibilities under which you lie. I hope there is not 
 in this assembly one father of a family who would en- 
 courage what I look on as openly profane, irrespective 
 of its contents a Sunday newspaper. The newspaper 
 is associated, by its very name, with the world it has, 
 therefore, no business on the Sabbath-day table, or with 
 the Sabbath-day title. The very title it assumes, a Sun- 
 day newspaper, proclaims on its forehead that it wilfully 
 tramples under its feet the fourth commandment of the 
 living God. I know there are excuses made for it, but, 
 in my judgment, they are untenable. I cannot speak of 
 the contents of Sunday newspapers, because I have had 
 neither opportunity nor desire to read them. I hope 
 you will all remain in the same happy ignorance of their 
 contents. Sequester the Sabbath for the study of things 
 above. 
 
 If we look abroad at other countries we shall find 
 this infidel spirit more rampant than it is at home. 
 France is full of infidelity of creed and no less so of 
 infidelity of social relationship, and immorality of life : 
 and, as if to show the frog glorying in its shame, the 
 most distinguished paper in France, the Journal des 
 Debats, made the remark the other day, " In France we 
 believe in every thing : we believe in Mahometanism, and 
 we believe in Christianity we build churches and we 
 build mosques : the banner of France waves equally over
 
 410 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the cross and the crescent." The person who wrote 
 this bombast is no doubt a sceptic, but he cannot be a 
 person of common sense surely he cannot believe con- 
 tradictions. There is, therefore, no risk we would think 
 that such absurdity would gain ground with reasonable 
 beings. But the recent disclosures of crime in France, even 
 on the part of some of its distinguished and prominent 
 statesmen the late melancholy Praslin tragedy, of which 
 you have all read are only the volcanic eruptions in- 
 dicating the depth of depravity that ferments below. 
 The following is an observation of the Procureur-royal 
 some time ago, at a public trial of a would-be regicide 
 " France has two corrosive and fearful sores those of in- 
 fidelity and revolutionary spirit." In Switzerland war 
 is carried on between the Jesuits and the infidels ; and I 
 see symptoms, from the writings of Michelet and Quinet, 
 who have done great service in putting down Popish 
 error, but very little, and can do very little, in spreading 
 Christian truth of a collision between the infidel and 
 papal spirit, and that soon. In Spain and Portugal in- 
 fidelity is rampant among the masses ; Italy rests upon 
 a volcano ready to burst forth any moment. 
 
 I now proceed to consider the second unclean spirit, 
 namely, the spirit that came from the mouth of the wild 
 beast the wild beast from the abyss, which I have 
 already described. I need not dwell on the principles of 
 Popery: these I have unfolded so often, and so fully, 
 that I think there is little chance that you will admire 
 them, and still less that you can be ignorant of them. I 
 will state, however, the progress that Romanism has 
 made within the last few years, and I shall do so very 
 much from personal inquiry and actual statistics. 
 
 First of all, then, the Roman Catholic Bishop, Dr. 
 Wiseman who is to be Archbishop of Westminster, hav- 
 ing laid aside the usual title Roman Catholic or Vicar 
 Apostolic stated, after the opening of a cathedral in the 
 midland districts, that Mr. Pugin has built, within the last 
 seven years, sixty new Roman Catholic churches, some of 
 which are larger and none less than the largest parochial 
 edifices in the kingdom. Some of these are cathedrals, 
 and one, St. George's in the Borough, is to have a spire
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 411 
 
 higher than that of any church in London, excepting 
 St. Paul's, and it has been rumoured in the papers, that 
 Pius IX. is to come over to open and to consecrate it. 
 It is also stated by Dr. Wiseman that, during the same 
 period of seven years, twenty-six nunneries and con- 
 vents have been opened in England ; and I cannot pass 
 through Southampton -row without meeting two and two 
 of the Sisters of Charity, each with a basket, one con- 
 taining Romish spiritual, the other containing English 
 corporal nutriment, and both labouring to make prose- 
 lytes of the poor to the Roman Catholic religion. 
 
 I only wish we had Sisters of Charity, not of the 
 Popish or Puseyite breed, but of the right Bible and Pro- 
 testant stamp, attached to our churches, in order that we 
 may have the full Apostolical complement. There were 
 deaconesses in the Apostolic Church, and I do not see 
 why they might not be revived with considerable advan- 
 tage in the Church of the nineteenth century, and thus 
 furnish to our Puseyite opponents one proof, at least, 
 that we only have the true Apostolical succession. I 
 may also state that there are throughout England, at this 
 moment, within one or two of 800 Roman Catholic 
 churches and chapels. There are in England and Scot- 
 land alone nearly 900 Roman Catholic priests. As many 
 Popish priests, nearly, as there are parochial clergymen 
 in the Church of Scotland. They have also one large 
 Quarterly Review, two or three monthly ; one very 
 talented weekly newspaper, conducted plainly by Jesuits; 
 they have apologists in indifferent statesmen and senators 
 advocates in Roman Catholic representatives abet- 
 tors in suicidal Protestants a fair field, in short, here, 
 which Protestantism has not in Rome and plenty of 
 favour throughout the length and breadth of England. 
 One single press at Derby, conducted by a professing 
 Protestant, I lament to say, or one that calls himself so, 
 has issued two millions of Roman Catholic publications 
 within the last few years, and these publications are dis- 
 tributed through the whole of our country. 
 
 The Propaganda at Lyons, established there in pre- 
 ference to Rome, had an income last year of 200,000. 
 The Wesleyan Missionary Society, which has, I believe,
 
 412 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 as large an income as any of our missionary societies, has 
 an annual income of, I believe, only 116,000; and 
 they reach that income mainly, I believe, by each Wes- 
 leyan feeling that he is not a mere cumberer of the 
 ground to occupy a pew, but is, what every Christian 
 ought to be, a missionary, or gatherer of missionary 
 means, in his place and vocation, for the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. In the year 1829, the Propaganda expended 
 none of its money upon England ; in the year 1 834, 
 it expended only 4,000 upon England; and in 1845, 
 it expended 40,000 on England alone in missionary 
 machinery. In France prayers are offered up every 
 Thursday for the conversion, or, strictly speaking, per- 
 version of England. In conversing with the Roman 
 Catholic priests in Belgium, whom I visited, and with 
 whom I conversed, I learned, among other things, that 
 they expected the speedy conversion of the whole Church 
 of England, and that they had agents in that Church 
 busily preparing and ripening the people for this great 
 consummation. I have reason to believe they are not 
 at all satisfied with some of the recent converts ; and I 
 believe most justly, because one Dr. Pusey in the midst 
 of the Church of England is worth twenty Dr. New- 
 mans outside that Church, for all Romish purposes and 
 projects. 
 
 But there have joined the Church of Rome within the 
 last few years SEVENTY clergymen of the Established 
 Church, about 120 persons connected with the nobility 
 and gentry of the country ; and the Roman Catholics 
 calculate, justly or otherwise, on more since Maynooth has 
 been endoAved Avith ampler funds, funds to which every 
 individual in this room is obliged to contribute in order 
 to enable the professors of that college to inculcate what 
 I am ready to prove to the satisfaction of any statesman, 
 bishop, or clergyman in Great Britain, to be idolatry and 
 persecution, as sanguinary as ever stained the practices or 
 inspired the creeds of Rome. I lament and grieve at this 
 
 I find, too, that wherever we have Protestant missions, 
 there the Roman Catholic Church has interfered. Tahiti 
 groans beneath the antichristian tri-colour flag. China 
 has been deluged by its priests India is visited, by
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 413 
 
 Popish bishops, and America yields rapidly to its conta- 
 gion ; and wherever Protestantism has planted the cross, 
 there Popery, Avith an expansive energy that does credit 
 to her industry, but deeply to our damage and regret, has 
 reared the crucifix. So confident are they of success, 
 that the Tablet newspaper calculates, that if Romanism 
 should go on in this country increasing during forty 
 years to come, as it has gone on during the last forty 
 years, two-fifths of the population of England will be 
 Roman Catholic in 1888, and if we had two-fifths of 
 Britain Roman Catholic, with almost the whole popula- 
 tion of Ireland so, then we should have a majority of the 
 people of this country Roman Catholic. 
 
 The maxim also adopted by statesmen now is, the creed 
 of the majority ought to be established by law ; so that 
 if this majority should come to be Roman Catholic in 
 this country, the Roman Catholic religion must be the 
 established Church. And the argument used is this : 
 We have established Episcopacy in England, Presbytery 
 in Scotland, why not establish Popery in Ireland ? Now 
 this theory plainly proceeds upon the hypothesis that 
 Popery is just as good as Protestantism ; and it really 
 comes to this, that because we give wheaten bread to 
 Englishmen, and oatmeal bread to Scotchmen, therefore 
 we ought to give prussic acid, or arsenic, to Irishmen. 
 Such reasoning needs only to be stated in order to dis- 
 close its utter absurdity. 
 
 America is overrun with Popish priests ; in that 
 country where, I may remark, there is no established 
 Church, Puseyism and Popery are rampant. In the New 
 York Evangelist, the statements made on this point are 
 perfectly astounding ; so much so, that I see in it the 
 working of a spirit that is supernatural but it is a spirit 
 that is not from above, but from beneath. Popery is so 
 adapted to human nature, that the wonder to me is not 
 so much that so many become Romanists, but that many 
 more do not. I wonder that every unconverted man 
 does not become a Roman Catholic : the system that al- 
 lows men to sin on this side the street, and to receive 
 absolution on the other that allows you to live as you 
 like, yet guarantees your ultimate safety, and, if some-
 
 414 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 what protracted, arrival in heaven ; that permits you to 
 be lax in morality, if you are only rigid in ceremony 
 that substitutes maceration of the flesh for the mortifica- 
 tion of its lusts, is the religion that human nature loves 
 and rejoices in. This system, too, has an infinite adapta- 
 tion. It grows in all soils it is an upas tree that flour- 
 ishes in all climates. It calls for repeal in Ireland, and 
 tries to crush liberty in France it is a democrat in 
 America, and an autocrat in Russia it tolerates no other 
 faith when it has power it whines and weeps that it is 
 persecuted when it has lost that power. It is heard in 
 royal cabinets and in republican congress ; its hands 
 touch the sceptre, and arrange the ballot-box. It gives 
 tutors to the children of the great, and opens free-schools 
 for the children of the poor. It enters the asylum, and 
 mingles with its bread Romish poison it finds access to 
 the hospital, and gives prescriptions from the Vatican to 
 be blended with the prescriptions of the physician. It 
 lives in all climes it breathes all airs it drinks all 
 streams it makes any sacrifice it assumes any shape 
 sleeps or springs its consuming and absorbing aim is 
 dominion over soul and body its effort is to contaminate 
 the one and crush the other, and to make captive to it- 
 self of the energies and influence of both. Its progress 
 and ravages are recorded in every journal its croakings 
 are heard in every corner of the land, and the foul traces 
 of its trail are seen wherever toleration has opened a 
 pathway for its presence. 
 
 Such, then, is a sketch of the progress of the second 
 unclean spirit, which proceeds from the mouth of the 
 wild beast from the abyss. The next is the spirit of the 
 false prophet. I showed you that he was identical with 
 the lamb-like wild beast ; and I proved, as you may see 
 in the lecture upon that subject, that this was the clergy 
 or the priesthood, in their collective capacity as distinct 
 from the Pope ; and I think that the sudden rise of 
 Puseyism, its rapid spread, and living energy, form some 
 of the strongest reasons for my identifying that move- 
 ment with the frog that came from the mouth of the 
 false prophet. For what, as I said, is Puseyism ? Just 
 Popery without the Pope. It is the wild beast's body
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 415 
 
 without the wild beast's head. All the principles, the 
 policy, the passions, the ambition, the end of Popery, 
 without the topstone of supremacy that Italian Popery 
 possesses. The following is the history of the system, 
 according to the statement of Mr. Rose. There was a 
 great popular movement in the year 1833, that led cer- 
 tain sagacious divines to believe that the Established 
 Church was to be overthrown. They imagined that 
 what is called the voluntary principle was destined to 
 gain the supremacy in this country. Believing this, they 
 said to themselves, " It is quite clear that if the Estab- 
 lishment be overthrown we shall be denuded of those 
 claims of superiority and of transcendental dignity which 
 we have never sacrificed, and be placed on a level with 
 the ministers of denominations not sustained by the 
 State." They said, " under such circumstances, we 
 must have something to fall back upon when the State 
 falls off. We will fall back upon the assumption, that 
 we are the Church, and that all Churches or communions, 
 extrinsic to ours, are heathen men and publicans." They 
 forthwith commenced their operations with consummate 
 skill and with growing success. The fourth century 
 was assumed as the great model of a Christian Church ; 
 and they laid it down, that the nearer they approximated 
 to it, the nearer they approached to perfection. The 
 Hon. and Rev. Mr. Perceval said, there were three 
 leading principles on which this system was based, and 
 on which they must proceed, namely, the participation 
 of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist ; that 
 the mystery of his body and blood was confided only to 
 the hands of the successors of the Apostles and their 
 delegates ; that, since the Apostles, those who derived 
 their succession from them in a direct and unbroken 
 line, by the imposition of hands of bishops, are the only 
 priests to give this body and blood unto the people. 
 These were the three principles on which they proceeded. 
 Many who patronized them at first, left them, and very 
 wisely ; others adhered. Other divines, however, be- 
 gan to read the Fathers as well as they, and other 
 scholars to study the ecclesiastical records of the fourth 
 century, and of the Ante-Nicene Church, as closely as
 
 416 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 they ; and, when it was shown to absolute demonstra- 
 tion, that to transfer the Nicene Church of the fourth 
 to the nineteenth century, would be the resurrection of 
 contamination, and a positive calamity to the most cor- 
 rupt Church in Christendom at the present moment, 
 Mr. Newman, who had the learning to discover and 
 the candour to avow this, saw that any defence of the 
 modern Church by a reference to the Nicene Church, 
 was altogether untenable ; but he was no less con- 
 vinced, that the end, viz. Popish supremacy, must be 
 gained by other means, if such could be discovered. 
 Instead of quoting the Nicene Church, as the model for 
 the Church of the nineteenth century, he struck out, or 
 rather resuscitated, the following theory : that the 
 Apostles left behind them the mere seeds of truth ; 
 these seeds of truth were intrusted to the Church, by 
 which word Tractarians and Romanists mean the Hier- 
 archy, to be gradually developed. They were succes- 
 sively developed, and expressed in the Council of Nice, 
 then in Ephesus, in Constantinople, the Councils of 
 Lateran, and ultimately in the Council of Trent, where 
 they were fully developed ; and the Council of Trent is 
 therefore the full development of the principles in- 
 trusted to the Apostles and their successors. The idea 
 is this, that the seed cast into the earth at Pentecost, 
 grew up into what the Romanists would call the glo- 
 rious and overshadowing tree of the Council of Trent, 
 the foliage, as it were, of the modern Roman Catholic 
 Church. In reading this book of Newman on deve- 
 lopments, it is not difficult to detect the fallacy. The 
 fallacy is this. He confounds development with ac- 
 cretion, the living increase of a plant with the mechan- 
 ical increase of a snow-ball in motion. Popery, instead 
 of being, as Mr. Newman thinks, seed developed in per- 
 fection in the Council of Trent, is a small snow-ball 
 starting from a mountain -top, and rolling down, gather- 
 ing in its course accretions of wood, hay, stones, stubble, 
 earth, &c., &c., till it rests at the bottom a frozen mass 
 of all heterogeneous materials an iceberg in short, the 
 Church of Rome. 
 
 The Tractarians, so called from the Oxford Tracts,
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 417 
 
 or Puseyites, so called from their chief leader, by and by 
 advocated the withdrawal of the doctrine of the atone- 
 ment from the pulpit, or its being regarded as a doctrine 
 of reserve. Justification by faith was " a Satanic doc- 
 trine;" the Apostolical succession, a vital truth; the 
 Episcopacy, not, as Hooker contends, a lawful ecclesias- 
 tical polity, but essential vital the substance of a 
 Church. The surplice was regarded as a sacerdotal robe ; 
 the communion table was turned into an altar ; the 
 Scotch Church was described as Samaria ; the Dissenters 
 were coolly consigned to the uncovenanted mercies of 
 God. Mr. Palmer says, " I should like to see the Pa- 
 triarch of Constantinople and Archbishop of Canterbury 
 go barefoot to Rome ; " mark the quiet proposal " go 
 barefoot to Rome, and fall upon the Pope's neck, and 
 kiss him, and never let him go till" when do you think? 
 "till they persuaded him to be reasonable" an attempt 
 about as likely to succeed as that of persuading a lunatic 
 asylum to develope itself into Exeter Hall. 
 
 Dr. Hook, the vicar of Leeds, made the statement, on 
 a recent occasion, " there is not a bishop, priest, or dea- 
 con, who cannot, if he please, trace his own descent to 
 Peter and Paul." Now, poor as I am, I will engage to 
 raise a thousand pounds for the vicar of Leeds, if he 
 will trace his own descent to Peter or Paul, or any of 
 the Apostles. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whateley, 
 justly observes, "there is not a minister in all Christen- 
 dom who is able, with any approach to certainty, to trace 
 his own succession to any one of the Apostles whatever." 
 
 These doctrines were spread in tracts, reviews, novels, 
 romances, and, at last, seventy clergymen, and a great 
 body of laymen, went over, with creditable consistency, 
 to the Roman Catholic Church. Such is the unclean 
 spirit from the mouth of the false prophet, or lamb-like 
 beast. 
 
 Nevertheless, much as England seems in some of her 
 recent acts to incline towards Popery, yet it is very re- 
 markable that there is no intimation in the Apocalypse 
 that the tenth kingdom, that is, Britain, which separated 
 from the Apostacy at the Reformation, shall be again 
 joined to the ten kingdoms, and become subject once more 
 2 E
 
 418 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 to the Roman Catholic Church. This gives me hope that 
 our country may not be contaminated to a fatal, it' it be 
 to a terrible, extent. It will no doubt be scourged for 
 its tampering with the Apostacy, as well as for its sins, 
 and its insensibility to privilege, but old England will 
 not again become, Avhat England once was, the serf of the 
 Apostacy. I trust there will continue in the midst of 
 her, by the blessing of God, a faithful Protestant people, 
 until the splendours of a Protestant reign blend and 
 mingle Avith the glories of the millennial period. 
 
 It has been thought by some highly probable that 
 France is to be the great national advocate of Popery, 
 and to lead the movement against the Protestantism 
 and Christianity of the world. I need not tell you that 
 there are not wanting growing symptoms of this. I quote 
 the following remarks from the Times Neicspaper: " The 
 King of the French is resuming for France its old posi- 
 tion, as the defender and patron of Romanism. France 
 is becoming daily more and more the supporter of Popery 
 throughout the world." And what seems to cast light 
 on this, is the curious historical fact, that the ancient na- 
 tional arms of France were not the tricolour or thefaur 
 de Us, but three frogs, as if there were conveyed some 
 allusion in the Apocalyptic symbols to the part France 
 is to play in connexion with the unclean spirits like 
 frogs. 
 
 I have thus given a sketch, and merely a sketch, of 
 the character, the actions, and progress of the three un- 
 clean spirits : let me show now what symbols there are 
 of the approaching consummation of many prophecies 
 destined to be fulfilled in these words, " Behold, I come 
 as a thief." 
 
 First, there is the drying up of the Euphrates, or wast- 
 ing of the Ottoman power, one of the last signs of the 
 last age of our present economy. The deepening interest 
 that is felt in every Christian Church in the conversion 
 of God's ancient people, the Jews, is the very sign that 
 "the set time to favour Zion is come," for the fact is im- 
 mediately added, " For thy servants take pleasure in her 
 stones." The interest felt among the nations of the 
 earth in the position of the Jews, seems to me to be an
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 419 
 
 evidence that they are about to be finally converted as a 
 nation. They were admitted as constituent members 
 of the Chamber of Deputies in France. In Prussia, a 
 discussion is going on whether the Jew shall be admitted 
 to German rights there. In Sweden, there is the very 
 same discussion. Pius IX. is doing one good thing, in 
 mitigating their sufferings. I need not tell you, that in 
 England, be it right or be it wrong, the great question 
 to be discussed in a feAv weeks, is, shall the Jews be ad- 
 mitted as members of the senate of our country. 
 
 The next evidence of the approaching termination of 
 the age, is the universal preaching of the gospel. 
 " This gospel shall be preached for a witness to all 
 nations, and then shall the end come." It is not said all 
 nations shall be converted, but all shall see or hear its tes- 
 timony. Now there is not a nation in any part of Europe, 
 Asia, or America, to which the gospel has not been 
 preached by missionaries ; and there is not a tongue into 
 which the Bible has not been ti'anslated. 
 
 Another sign is that stated by Daniel : " Many shall 
 run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." 
 What evidence of this have we in the wonders of steam, 
 in the development of the almost unearthly powers of elec- 
 tricity as exhibited in the electric telegraph, and in other 
 discoveries, accumulating so rapidly, that it seems as if 
 things hurried to that glorious epoch, when they shall 
 minister to the spread and add to the splendours of the 
 kingdom of the Messiah. 
 
 The present energy of Romish missions is also pre- 
 monitory, as I have said, of the last consummation. I 
 believe the Romish Catholic Church is doomed to reach 
 a prodigious, but a very short ascendency. I believe she 
 will set her throne among the stars, that the stroke that 
 precipitates her to hell may be only the more terrific and 
 destructive. 
 
 I may quote from authors who will not be suspected of 
 any thing like fanaticism, evidence that we are now at 
 the last crisis. Schlegel, the celebrated German philo- 
 sopher and critic, says, " Never was there a period that 
 pointed so strikingly and so clearly to the future, as th& 
 very hour in which we live." Professor Bush, of Ame- 
 2 E 2
 
 420 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 rica, says, " We have now arrived at the very borders of 
 that period which is to be signalized by the winding up 
 of that drama which has for ages been enacted in Christ- 
 endom." Professor Robinson says, " Before another 
 half century shall have rolled away, there will be seen 
 revolutions in the Oriental mind such as have been never 
 witnessed, or even dreamed of before." Dr. Arnold, 
 who had a most sober mind, and showed it specially 
 upon this subject, says, " Modern history seems not only 
 a step in advance of ancient history, but the last step. 
 Modern society seems to bear marks, that the fulness of 
 times is come that there will be no future history ; and 
 if this be the case, that we are living in the last age of 
 the world's history, that no other race remains behind to 
 perfect what we have neglected, to restore what we have 
 ruined ; then, indeed, the interest of modern history be- 
 comes most intense ! " 
 
 " The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night : " 
 "For when men shall say peace and safety, sudden 
 destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman 
 with child." And "as in the days of the flood, they 
 were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in mar- 
 riage, until the days that Noah entered into the ark, and 
 knew not until the flood came and took them all away ; 
 so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." No man 
 knows when the crisis shall come. But, whether our 
 Lord shall come, like the lightning flash, rending 
 striking before it warns consuming; or whether he 
 shall send the influenza, or the cholera, which hovers on 
 our horizon, and is suspended at our shores, waiting to 
 do its havoc, and discharge its mission the instant that 
 God permits ; or whether he comes for us, or calls us to 
 him, are you ready ? You that love father and mother 
 more than Christ you that love traffic, and goods, and 
 profit, more than your souls you that are not ready to 
 take wing, and fly like doves to that eastern window 
 you that, like Lot's wife, are looking back at the things 
 of the world you have left behind you that cannot say, 
 like Simeon, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart 
 in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation" you 
 that are strangers to the power of the truth of the
 
 THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS. 421 
 
 blessed gospel what is your hope ? Two thousand per 
 week are now dying above those that have died in the 
 corresponding period of other years in London alone. 
 The pestilence walks at our doors the plague is on the 
 wing some of you, to-day, healthy and vigorous, may 
 never again hear the gospel in Exeter Hall, or elsewhere. 
 Oh ! what a responsibility, then, falls upon us both ! If 
 you perish without a Saviour, if you are not washed in 
 that blood, I know of nothing that remains for you but 
 an eternal and irretrievable hell, " where their worm dieth 
 not, and the fire is not quenched." The avenger is at 
 your heels flee, my dear hearers, to the only Refuge ; 
 the destroying angel is on the wing, have recourse to the 
 precious blood of sprinkling ; the day of death may come 
 to-morrow ; and naked, with nothing but your responsi- 
 bility upon you, you must stand before that God, before 
 whose eye all hearts are naked, and all secrets disclosed. 
 And, oh ! my friends, a lost soul ! what language can 
 describe it ? what a wreck ! what a terrible ruin ! what 
 a loss irretrievable, hopeless, eternal ! And yet you 
 are perishing beside the very tree of life you are 
 ignorant amidst the light of heaven. The Saviour bids 
 you believe. The Son of God stretches out his arms to 
 reclaim you. God the Father waits to bless you. Let 
 every such soul in this assembly, this very night, before 
 he retires to rest, fall down upon his knees and say, O 
 my Saviour, wash this guilty soul in thy blood fill this 
 blighted heart with thy Spirit make me thy child ; and 
 then, whether thou comest to me, or takest me to thyself, 
 I shall be able to close my pilgrimage in time, which is 
 the commencement of my inheritance in glory, by saying 
 " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." Amen.
 
 LECTURE XXII. 
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 
 
 " And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air ; and there 
 
 came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, 
 
 saying, It is done. 
 " And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings ; and there 
 
 was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the 
 
 earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. 
 " And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of 
 
 the nations fell : and great Babylon came in remembrance 
 
 before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness 
 
 of his wrath. 
 
 " And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 
 " And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone 
 
 about the weight of a talent : and men blasphemed God because 
 
 of the plague of the hail ; for the plague thereof was exceeding 
 
 great." REV. xvi. 17 21. 
 
 WE saw in our description of the sixth vial, on which 
 I addressed you last Sunday evening, that the three 
 unclean spirits, whom I identified, had gone forth 
 through the length and breadth of the world to prepare 
 kings and nations and people for that great day of con- 
 flict and decision which approaches us every hour. 
 
 We read that while these unclean spirits are in action, 
 and just previous to their retirement from the field, 
 the seventh angel pours out the seventh vial ; and that 
 vial, we are told, is not poured out, like the others, upon 
 definite localities, but upon the air, or the atmosphere 
 we breathe. You may recollect, that at the sounding 
 of the trumpets, under which Mahometanism was to 
 rise, it was said that its "smoke darkened the air;" 
 that is, tainted the whole social, political, and moral 
 economy to the extent of its virus, and according to the 
 limits of its action. So here the air is to be affected by 
 this vial.
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 423 
 
 The sixth, I have told you, is already poured out ; its 
 effects are now in action. Nations feel it. The seventh 
 is ready to be poured out ; or, if not already pouring 
 out, we are upon the very verge of its being so. It 
 trembles in the hand of the angel. The effect of its 
 action, the moment it is poured out, is that the air of 
 heaven the symbolical air mainly, I believe, though the 
 literal air, according to others, may be included also 
 will be affected, or darkened, or tainted, in some way, 
 by its influence. Certainly we gather from this prophecy 
 one fact at least, that the action of this vial will not be, 
 like previous ones, local, but universal. The air is the 
 most universally present element we have or know. It 
 surrounds the globe like a zone reaches to the highest 
 descends to the lowest embraces in its scope the re- 
 motest, and penetrates the most secret. We may expect 
 that, during the action of this vial, the mountaineer 
 amid his fastnesses the miner in his subterranean 
 caves the voyager upon the ocean's bosom the Arab 
 in his desert the Moslem in his mosque the Cossack 
 on his steppes the king upon his throne the mother 
 in her household the babe in the cradle all will feel 
 its vibrations receive the taint of its influence, and re- 
 spond in a thousand echoes to the voice from above, " It 
 is done." 
 
 I endeavoured to show you, on a previous occasion, 
 that the symbols in the Apocalypse are to be understood 
 mainly in their moral and figurative import ; but I also 
 observed, as you will recollect, at the same time, that 
 whilst they have their moral, which is their first mean- 
 ing, they have generally a literal, which is their secondary 
 meaning. I quoted an illustration of this from that an- 
 cient prophecy of Balaam, when he spoke of "a star 
 from the East," meaning by that star, the Messiah. The 
 advent of Christ was the fulfilment of that symbol ; but, 
 at the same, there was a literal meteoric star that 
 heralded the advent of Christ ; and thus, whilst its main 
 meaning was its figurative one, its secondary meaning 
 was its literal one. So we may expect here, that this 
 tainting of the atmosphere is, primarily indeed, a moral 
 and a social influence ; but, secondarily and subordi-
 
 424 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 nately, a literal and actual influence on the atmospheric 
 air. We may, therefore, expect that the physical air will 
 be tainted as well as the moral one ; and may I not 
 venture, without attempting to identify too minutely, to 
 ask, are there not signs that indicate the taint that is 
 here alluded to ? Let me ask you, though the influenza 
 has visited us before, let me ask the medical men in 
 this hall to say, whether the universal idea of that epi- 
 demic be not that it is a taint in the atmosphere, and com- 
 municated, not by personal contagion, but through the 
 air that we breathe ? If it be true that the cholera is sus- 
 pended on our shores, floating, like a fearful miasma, 
 upon the outskirts of our beloved land, ready to rush upon 
 the empire the instant that the repressive providence of 
 God is withdrawn, has it not been, let me ask, the al- 
 most unanimous verdict of scientific and medical inquiry 
 in this matter, that the cholera is not contagious from 
 one to another ? I would go to the sick-bed of a dying 
 man in the agonies of cholera, just as I would go to the 
 sick-bed of a man dying in consumption or any other 
 disease. The Apocalypse speaks of contagion in the air 
 as its source. Science adds its Amen to Scripture, and 
 says it is so. Therefore, if we are to be visited by that 
 plague, my dear friends, do not shrink through fear in 
 attentions to the dying. Go to their bed-sides and minis- 
 ter to their comfort, and, if possible, to their cure. Take 
 the discovery of science that it is not contagious by per- 
 sonal contact, as the human precaution ; take the 91st 
 Psalm as the Divine prescription, and remember the 
 seventh vial that the air, not personal contagion, will 
 be the source of that calamity should God be pleased to 
 send it. 
 
 Of course, in thus identifying disease with the atmo- 
 sphere for its vehicle, I have descended, perhaps, to what 
 some may call a needlessly minute reference. But we 
 can conceive what has already taken place to be magni- 
 fied a thousand-fold ; and, when that calamity shall 
 come, we may recollect, when we see its ravages around 
 us, that Scripture has not only its moral, which I admit 
 is its main reference, but also its literal, which, I have 
 said, is its secondary or subordinate reference.
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 425 
 
 .Its main reference, however, I proceed to remark, is, 
 that the moral, social, and political atmosphere will be 
 disarranged and disturbed, probably disorganized, Ks 
 soon as this vial is poured out upon the air. Are there 
 no signs and symptoms of this in the present day ? Is it 
 not the fact, that great political parties are at this mo- 
 ment totally disorganized, and great leaders, worshipped 
 a few years ago, are now either cast off, or execrated by 
 many ? Matters are worse beyond the Channel. There 
 men high in office have fallen in succession, under the 
 most humiliating and miserable eclipses. Is it not ob- 
 vious to every beholder, that at this very present moment, 
 ther-e is such a fusion and confusion of social, political, 
 ecclesiastical parties, that it seems to resemble that dis- 
 location and disintegration of atoms which, in the phy- 
 sical world, precedes new, startling, or, it may be, more 
 glorious combinations ? We have only, therefore, to look 
 abroad upon the political world, without being politicians, 
 to see that the social and political atmosphere of the 
 present day is affected and disturbed to a great and 
 menacing extent. But the atmosphere will not only 
 be disturbed, it will also be tainted ; we' may expect 
 that there will arise frightful views and notions of Di- 
 vine truths ; strange and awful heresies ; misconcep- 
 tions of fundamental principles ; new and extraordinary 
 schemes for the regeneration of mankind : old principles 
 will be superseded ; new theories will be broached. In 
 such circumstances Christians will find that the only 
 charter they can go to, the only loadstone that can guide 
 them, will not be the traditions of men, or the dicta of 
 great synods or whole benches of bishops, or the con- 
 clusions of councils, but only " the law and the testimony," 
 the word of the living God. 
 
 There will be rocking thrones ; there will be sub- 
 verted dynasties; there will be dislocated systems:* 
 there will be nations scattered and shaken as by a whirl- 
 wind, and the hearts of the great and the mean, the rich 
 
 * What fearful evidence of the first effects of the pouring out 
 of this vial have we, while this sheet is passing through the press, 
 in Paris ! The great earthquake of the seventh vial seems to be now 
 shaking the earth.
 
 426 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 and the poor, trembling for fear of the things coming on 
 the earth. I gather this by inference. I may be mis- 
 taken : I think I am right : time will determine the im- 
 port and the nature of the prophecy. 
 
 This is also further illustrated in the 18th verse : 
 " there was a great earthquake, such as was not seen 
 since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake 
 and so great." The French Revolution, you recollect, 
 was signalized by an earthquake. I need not state that 
 the most eminent writers who have made any reference 
 to that Revolution called it so. Thus, Alison, whose 
 history I have recommended to you before, calls the 
 French Revolution " that great earthquake." I may here 
 pause to state the very remarkable fact, that, dating time 
 from the commencement of the globe, and on the sup- 
 position that the Jewish idea is a right one, that as there 
 are six days in the week, and the seventh is the Sabbath, 
 so there will be six millenaries, or periods of a thousand 
 years in the lapse of time, and the seventh will be the 
 Millennium. It will follow from that interpretation 
 which I omitted to state in my previous lecture that 
 we are now at the close of the thousand years that con- 
 stitutes the world's Saturday ; and on the very dawn of 
 the seventh thousand years, that shall constitute the 
 world's Sabbath. On the advent of that glorious Sab- 
 bath the Millennium I will speak next Lord's day ; 
 and, I trust, I shall speak the language of soberness, 
 solemnity, and truth. It may be then, if this be so, as 
 it is described in the words of Cowper, the best and no- 
 blest of England's poets, because exemplary as a Chris- 
 tian in all he wrote, as well as in all he lived : 
 
 " Six thousand years of sorrow have well nigh 
 FulfilPd their tardy and disastrous course 
 Over a sinful world ; and what remains 
 Of this tempestuous state of human things 
 Is merely as the working of the sea 
 Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest." 
 
 To return it is stated, as the result of this earth- 
 quake, that the great city was divided into three parts. 
 I explained, in previous lectures, what that city was. I
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 427 
 
 showed that it was the Romish ecclesiastical system ; its 
 centre Rome, its circumference almost the limits of the 
 globe. I showed you, too, that heretofore, for 1300 
 years, the nations that were subject to Rome had counted 
 ten the ten kingdoms, or decem-regal governments, 
 and constituted the nations of the Apostacy. Now, you 
 will notice that, under the seventh vial, the ten-king- 
 dom form is no longer to be the distinctive characteristic 
 of the Romish nations ; they are to assume a new shape ; 
 they will be divided into a tripartite shape : three great 
 masses will be the ultimate form into which all the 
 nations of Europe and of Christendom will be divided ; 
 and as soon as you see three great leading powers coming 
 into collision, with broad Europe for their battle-field, 
 and the evening of the world for the hour of their con- 
 flict, you may expect that the downfal of Babylon, and 
 the advent of Christ, and the dawn of the Millennium, 
 are near. It is probable that this tripartite division will 
 consist of France leading its hosts upon the one side, as 
 the great partisan of the Papacy ; the Autocrat of all the 
 Russias, who has more than once played a cruel game, 
 may lead the second part ; and I have some idea that 
 this Old England of ours, so illustrious by its sainted 
 sufferers, its noble army of martyrs, its devoted Chris- 
 tians, its preached gospel, its spreading Christianity, 
 its circulated Bibles, will be also the third part ; and, 
 when the conflict comes, it will be, as of old, England 
 against the world, the Truth of God against the apos- 
 tacy of Satan and the infidelity of man. 
 
 It is then added after this, that not only was that 
 great city, which I have shown to be an ecclesiastical 
 system, divided into three parts, but " the cities of 
 the nations" also fell. I have assumed, that the great 
 city was an ecclesiastical power, i. e. the Romish ; I 
 must, in consistency with this interpretation, assume 
 that the cities of the nations are the established Churches 
 of the nations too. Now, I know not the nature of this 
 vast audience now listening to me ; I know not the com- 
 ponent parts of which it is formed, and therefore I 
 speak not to offend, nor to please, but to enforce truth.
 
 428 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 I feel sure that the hour which seals the ruin of the 
 Church of England, and the Church of Scotland, and 
 the Church of Ireland, and all ecclesiastical establish- 
 ments, is at our very doors. Some may deplore it as a 
 bitter and painful event ; others may rejoice at it as " a 
 consummation devoutly to be wished for." The greatest 
 friends of our established Churches will admit they have 
 grievously sinned against God, and come short of their 
 duties to souls ; and their greatest and their bitterest foes 
 surely cannot deny that they have done noble things in 
 their day, and have still many bright and glorious feats 
 to commemorate. Churchmen, make not idols of your 
 churches ; Dissenters, make not fierce and ungenerous 
 attacks on them. Churchmen, cease to rail at Dissenters ; 
 Dissenters, cease to attack Churchmen. Churchmen 
 and Dissenters, forget the altars about which you strive 
 in your remembrance of the common glory which must 
 burn for ever. Forgive the shape, the structure, the 
 material of the vessels, and rejoice that so many faithful 
 men are found in each, who " count all but loss for the 
 excellency of Christ," are ready to forsake all in order to 
 win Him. I know not, nor dare I prophesy, ivhen the 
 last shock will come, but I fear the signs of the approach- 
 ing destruction begin to multiply and gather every day. 
 I tell you candidly, I love the Church I belong to ; and 
 in its place, and on the proper occasion, I shall not shrink 
 from the duty of being its champion and its defender ; 
 but I cannot deny that it has been weakened more than 
 once by secessions ; and you may already see that the 
 very last week, the thin edge of the wedge, has been 
 introduced, which is destined, in all likelihood, to split 
 and sever the powerful ecclesiastical establishment of 
 England into a thousand splinters ! Well, come what may, 
 the gospel will not perish. When the alabaster-box is 
 broken, the fragrance will spread more widely ; when 
 the earthen vessel is shivered, the God that made it will 
 create another, and fill it with yet richer elements. 
 
 It is added also, in this chapter, that there was a great 
 hailstorm. Vitringa and others understand it literally. 
 Mr. Elliott understands it literally in its secondary
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 429 
 
 meaning, but primarily, in its figurative meaning ; and 
 supposes, by a hailstorm is meant Northern invasion, 
 an irruption of one of the great powers of the tripar- 
 tite division ; and this seems to me the probable inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 It is at this crisis, you observe, when the air is 
 tainted by the touch of the seventh vial, when the great 
 cities of the nations fall, that Babylon, as it is stated in 
 the 19th verse, that "Babylon came in remembrance 
 before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the 
 fierceness of his wrath." The 17th and 18th chapters, 
 and the portion of the 19th, which I have read, contain 
 the particulars of the downfal and destruction of the 
 Church of Rome. Now let me show you, first of all, that 
 it is the Romish Apostacy which is the subject of these ter- 
 rific judgments. First, she is described here as an un- 
 chaste and unfaithful woman, just as the Church of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ is described as the bride of the Lamb. 
 The one is the true Church the other is the Apostacy ; 
 and that relationship which the marriage tie implies, is 
 always employed, throughout the word of God, to denote 
 the communion which subsists between the people of God, 
 and their living Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the 
 Apostle says, (2 Cor. xi. 2,) " I have espoused you to 
 one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin 
 to Christ. But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent 
 beguiled Eve, through his subtlety, so your minds 
 should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in 
 Christ." Now the Church of Rome is regarded as having 
 been thus corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ, 
 and her character, as I might prove at length, had I sufficient 
 time, responds completely to the character of the fallen 
 and guilty woman, whose doom, as the representative of 
 the Church of Rome, is so graphically depicted in the 
 18th and 19th chapters. She is represented as giving 
 to the kings and nations of the earth, " the wine of the 
 cup of her fornication." The gospel is likened unto 
 pure wine, the wine of the kingdom : " Ho, every one 
 that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, yea come, buy wine 
 and milk without money and without price."
 
 430 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 The doctrines of the Church of Rome, on the other 
 hand, are symbolized and set forth by a deleterious 
 mixture, called the wine of her fornication. That wine 
 is not the pure and nutritive truth of the gospel, but 
 the poisonous mixture of an unhallowed chalice. The 
 nations of the earth have drunk of it, and have become 
 intoxicated, and perished in their intoxication for ever. 
 And, as if to show the strict propriety of the application 
 of this symbol, Mr. Elliott states the fact, that in 1825, 
 when the last jubilee was celebrated, the Pope caused a 
 medal to be struck, upon one side of which was the 
 figure of himself, and, on the obverse side of that medal, 
 a woman holding in her right hand a golden cup ; while 
 it was written below the woman, according to the Pope's 
 direction, " Sedet super universum," She sits upon the 
 universe ; or, in Apocalyptic language, she sits, like the 
 woman in this chapter, " upon many waters." 
 
 It is said this woman was clothed with purple and 
 with scarlet. One need scarcely proceed to identify 
 these ; no ordinary ministers in any Protestant Church 
 in Christendom, nor the chief ministers of any section of 
 the Protestant Church upon earth, none, save and except 
 those of the Church of Rome, are clothed distinctively 
 with purple and scarlet. I might quote the descriptions of 
 her own priests ; I might give you the sketches of histo- 
 rians and visitors to Rome, who all combine in testifying 
 to the fact, that her cardinals, and her chief ecclesiastical 
 officers, are clothed in those very robes whose colour 
 and shade are so distinctively and minutely described in 
 this chapter. Then it is added, that " she was decked 
 with gold, and precious stones, and pearls." You have 
 only to read the records of their mediasval grandeur, or 
 to visit the shrines that Napoleon did not plunder, and 
 the churches that the revolutionaries did not dismantle, 
 or such churches and chapels connected with Rome on 
 the continent of Europe as have been restored and re- 
 placed in all their ancient grandeur since the French 
 Revolution, in order to find proof of this. Bishop New- 
 ton, in speaking of one chapel, that of Loretto, at Rome, 
 says, "the gold and silver lamps, and the jewels and
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 431 
 
 finery that were heaped upon it, was beyond the power 
 of language to describe ;" and I have myself seen, on 
 the continent of Europe, altars covered with gold ; the 
 altar rails decked with Valenciennes, and Brussels, and 
 other sorts of lace, the value of which I was told was 
 almost incalculable. Even around the mouldering bones 
 of their saints there are crowns, the jewels in which are 
 of very great A'alue. But I need not dwell upon this : 
 any historian will show you that she is the Church that 
 has been careless of her moral, anxious only about her 
 material grandeur whose effort has been, not to save 
 the soul, but to fascinate the senses whose religion con- 
 sists in splendid altars, in golden shrines, in carved 
 images, in attractive rites, while she has neglected the 
 weighty things of the kingdom, " righteousness and 
 peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 The next characteristic of this woman is, that she is 
 called " Mystery." I state one striking proof of the ap- 
 plication of this, that on the ancient tiara of the Pope 
 the tiara being three crowns fastened upon one, and ex- 
 plained by some of the schoolmen to denote that the Pope 
 has power in heaven, and power in earth, and power in 
 purgatory there was written, by their own consent, 
 this very title, " Mystery." And, whether that title be 
 assumed by Rome or not, it is unquestionably the dis- 
 tinctive characteristic of the system : I think I explained 
 the reason of this to you on a previous occasion ; Infi- 
 delity has no mystery about it ; Socinianism has no mys- 
 tery about it ; but Popery is a great mystery ; and in 
 this lies one of the secrets of its success ; it is every thing 
 and any thing truth and yet a lie, a Proteus, a chame- 
 leon, and possessed at the same time of the most subtle 
 adaptation. Persecuted in one text, it will literally flee 
 to another text : driven from one argument, it will fall 
 back upon another : and the most difficult thing in the 
 world is to exhaust the resources of a Popish priest, or 
 to extinguish all the sophisms of a Popish controver- 
 sialist. But its peculiar claim to the epithet " Mystery" 
 is this : it admits every truth that we admit, it pro- 
 claims its identity with our belief up to a certain point. 
 Only last week I was speaking with two Roman Catho-
 
 432 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 lie priests, both of whom were Jesuits, and one of them 
 said, " We Roman Catholics must be saved, for we hold 
 every truth that you Protestants hold j we only hold a 
 little more ; so that," said he, " if you have one loaf we 
 have a loaf and a half. If you therefore have enough, it 
 follows of necessity that we also must have enough." 
 Now this seemed very plausible ; but the real state of 
 the question is, is it indeed half a loaf added to the 
 whole loaf ? if it be so, well. But I contended, and was 
 ready to show them, that it is not half a loaf, but half a 
 pound of arsenic, or half a gallon of prussic acid ; not 
 the excess of wholesome bread, but the addition of deadly 
 poison. She admits every truth, but, at the same time, 
 applies to that truth the corresponding heresy that neu- 
 tralizes and destroys it. Hence her creed, as I think I 
 explained to you, which consists first of the twelve Ar- 
 ticles, which constitute what is called the Nicene Creed ; 
 that is, the creed drawn up by the Council of Nice in 
 the year 325, which contains a short epitome of the 
 truths of Christianity : then, after admitting these twelve 
 true and orthodox Articles, she adds to them twelve 
 other Articles, and these two twelves or twenty-four 
 Articles constitute what is called Pope Pius IVth's 
 Creed, which every priest and convert subscribes as true : 
 so that, if a Roman Catholic were just to clip his creed 
 in two with a pair of scissors, the first half would be 
 pure Bible Christianity, the last half pure Popish 
 heresy. The Roman Catholic deals thus with you : he 
 introduces you into a large and well-lighted room, and 
 says, " Just look around in this room : you see in it 
 twelve windows that give free access to the light of hea- 
 ven;" and he asks, with sarcastic triumph, "is the re- 
 ligion of the Church of Rome that system which Pro- 
 testant fanatics in Exeter Hall describe it to be ?" You 
 are constrained to admit that the hall is filled with 
 pure light from the sun : you are pleased : you are con- 
 vinced that his Church has been misrepresented and 
 calumniated : you cast in your lot with him, and 
 you come to that which the priest knows is the crown- 
 ing thing : he brings you at once before him as a 
 penitent : you unbosom the secret thoughts of your
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 433 
 
 mind, the deepest affections of your heart, the sins that 
 have tainted or troubled it, the thoughts that have cross- 
 ed it, in order to receive absolution : the priest thus soon 
 knows your heart and history just as well as you know 
 them yourself; and the man that knows my heart as 
 thoroughly as I know it myself, is my master for the 
 rest of my life, and I am his poor and crouching slave. 
 Thus, when the priest has got you so far, he holds you 
 a helpless victim within his meshes. He then keeps you 
 in this room, as yet filled with clear sunlight ; he puts 
 on shutter after shutter of the last twelve articles of 
 the Creed of Pius IV., and when the room has been to- 
 tally darkened by the application to it of the twelve 
 blinds, he lights up his own blue lights on his ancient 
 candelabras, which the Tractarians try to mimic or to 
 steal, and soon convinces you that the pure light was 
 admitted into the room through the twelve windows, 
 only to fascinate and allure you, in order that he may put 
 on the twelve shutters, and kindle the light within, which 
 will only light you to your everlasting destruction. 
 
 But not only is she called " Mystery," but she is like- 
 wise called the " Mother of harlots." That is, if the 
 mother Church is called the harlot, then the subordinate 
 false Churches are called harlots also. Thus, then, the 
 Apocalyptic description of her is " the mother of harlots ;" 
 and what do you think is the language of the twelfth 
 article of the Creed of Pope Pius IV., as held by every 
 one who embraces that creed ? It is in these words : " I 
 acknowledge the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman 
 Church, the mother and mistress of all Churches." Every 
 Roman Catholic unconsciously adopts almost the words 
 of the Apocalypse, and thus identifies the Church of Pius 
 IX. with the Apocalyptic picture of the Apostacy. 
 
 It is then said, that she is " drunk with the blood of 
 saints." Need I verify this characteristic of the Church 
 of Rome ? The sounds of the Sicilian vespers have not 
 yet died away upon the ear ; the blood that stained the 
 fertile soil of France, may be concealed by vineyards, 
 and by the golden corn that grows upon the surface, but 
 it is seen by God, and will be remembered in the hour 
 2 F
 
 434 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of his judgments. The Marian reign in our own country, 
 and Smithfield, are not yet forgotten by those to whom 
 Fox's Book of Martyrs * is any thing more than an old 
 almanac. And, without touching upon any thing beyond 
 the province of a minister of the gospel touching only 
 upon that which all parties admit, let me ask you to look 
 across to that country whose Protestant clergy were too 
 long unfaithful, and who have only become faithful when 
 their ruin seems to be all but inevitable. Look across 
 the Channel at poor, blighted, miserable Ireland : the 
 excellent and the upright man is denounced from the 
 altar, not upon a Sunday, as is publicly charged, and 
 denied, but upon the Monday, which is not denied, and 
 he is shot by the Monday night ; and so fearful is the 
 havoc, that the records which come every day, tell you 
 that it is better to be in the field of open battle, where 
 you have the foe gallantly to contend with, than to walk 
 into your own ground, and go out from your own home 
 carrying your death-warrant in your own pocket. My 
 dear friends, you may disguise it as you like, and states- 
 men may think what they please about it, but Popery is 
 at the root of all this. It is the upas tree it is the root 
 of bitterness ; eradication is the only cure. I bid you 
 look to the north of Ireland, where Protestants abound ; 
 comparatively how peaceful ! how quiet ! how pros- 
 perous ! yet it is the most sterile province of the four. 
 The contrast between it and the south is almost between 
 Paradise and Pandemonium. Compare the Protestant 
 cantons of Switzerland with the Roman Catholic ; every 
 traveller can tell you the difference. Compare Scotland 
 with Ireland : every acre in Ireland, in point of fertility, 
 is worth four acres in Scotland ; how vast the moral 
 difference ! It all goes to establish the fact, that true 
 religion elevates a land to the sunshine of Paradise; 
 while superstition and infidelity exhaust its value, and 
 degrade and ruin it : the old maxim holds good, " Right- 
 eousness exalteth a nation, and sin must be the ruin of 
 any people." 
 
 * Let me commend to the notice of the reader the edition of 
 Fox's Book of Martyrs published by Virtue, Ivy Lane.
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 435 
 
 Let us notice the next characteristic of this great city. 
 This woman whose crimes had provoked the judg- 
 ments of Heaven who is described as Mystery, and 
 drunk with the blood of saints, the mother of harlots 
 is declared to have her seat her main seat upon a 
 " wilderness." You ask, then, is it a fact that the head 
 of the Romish Church, " the mother and mistress of 
 all Churches," is enthroned upon a desert. Just let us 
 recollect what is the name of the place that surrounds 
 the city of Rome, and which the crown of the Pope at 
 this moment specially governs ; it is called the Cam- 
 pagna. In the day when John wrote the Apocalypse, it 
 was literally the most fertile and the most beautiful spot 
 in the whole continent of Europe, and were St. John 
 alluding to the Campagna upon which Csesar sat, it 
 could not have been called a desert with truth ; but, re- 
 collect, he is describing the spot not on which Cassar sat 
 in his day, but on which this mother and mistress of har- 
 lots sits in our day, and he calls it a wilderness. Has 
 any change taken place in it since the Caesars reigned ? 
 I open the pages of Gibbon, and I find him stating, that 
 at the close of the sixth century, just after the Roman 
 empire had passed away, and the Popish empire had 
 taken its place, " the Campagna about this time was re- 
 duced to the state of a dreary wilderness ; the land be- 
 came barren, and the waters impure ; and the inundations 
 of the Tiber rushed with irresistible force into the valleys 
 of the seven hills, and bred pestilence and fever from the 
 stagnation of the deluge." So that at this time to which 
 John here refers, it is literally true that Rome sits upon 
 the desert ; and it is no less true that that desert, which 
 she can neither drain nor cultivate, extinguishes her 
 population year by year, showing that, whatever re- 
 forms may have dawned upon Pope Pius IX., the sani- 
 tary improvements so admirably pressed in the present 
 day, and so truly needed, have not yet been thought of 
 in the march of Pontifical intellect. 
 
 Now the 18th chapter details at length the successive 
 judgments that shall fall upon this great Babylon. There 
 comes down an angel radiant with glory, who cries aloud, 
 2 F 2
 
 436 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 and proclaims "Babylon is fallen." He first, however, 
 addresses the people of God in the midst of Rome, 
 " Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers 
 of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." 
 Then the scenes of her last desolation sweep in succes- 
 sion, and with terrific grandeur, before the eye of the 
 seer, unfolding an awfulness of ruin unparalleled in any 
 other doom delineated in the sacred volume. 
 
 It is stated two or three times in the course of the Apo- 
 calypse, that she shall be consumed with fire. Several 
 expositors think that this refers to the kings of the earth 
 who shall be driven utterly to destroy her ; but I showed 
 you that their part was fulfilled at the commencement of 
 the French Revolution, when the Pope was marched from 
 his capital, and made a prisoner under the Emperor of 
 France, and with the acquiescence of other kings. 
 I believe, therefore, that the fire that is to consume the 
 Romish mother and mistress of Churches the great 
 Babylon the Mystery that is enthroned upon the 
 desert, is a literal and not a figurative flame. I do not see 
 how it can mean that the kings of the earth will destroy 
 her, because they are represented as mourners at her 
 ruin, not as burners hastening that ruin : I cannot think 
 that the great ones of the earth can be referred to, 
 for they are spoken of as weeping for her fall, not pre- 
 cipitating and accomplishing that fall. I believe, there- 
 fore, that Rome will be destroyed by literal fire. Can 
 we say how ? First, it has been ascertained by geologists, 
 in the course of the last few years, that the interior por- 
 tions of that very globe, on the crust of which our houses 
 are built, is one vast mass of liquid or molten fire ; and 
 that earthquakes, the vibrations of which we feel, are 
 but the shocks of those fiery waves lashing those desolate 
 subterranean shores, and that those volcanoes are but the 
 safety-valves that allow the excess of its action to escape, 
 lest the crust of the earth should be riven in pieces, and 
 all its population perish. And in that very fact which 
 modern geology has discovered, I can see the explana- 
 tion of the third chapter of the Second Epistle of Peter ; 
 and here I cannot but observe, that the ministers of the
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 437 
 
 gospel must, and that right speedily, take up science as 
 it bears on the Bible, and the Bible as it bears on 
 science, and show what will be found to be fact, that the 
 purest science is the highest testimony to the truth of 
 Revelation ; so that neither the hammer of the geologist 
 shall break the Rock of Ages, nor the telescope of the 
 astronomer detect one flaw in the Sun of Righteousness, 
 nor the discoveries of man dim the revelation of God : 
 on the contrary, I believe that the day comes, when 
 science through all its organs, and literature through all 
 its channels, and statesmen from their cabinets, and 
 kings and queens from their thrones, shall join together, 
 and sing with one song, and utter with one voice, " Be- 
 hold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the 
 world." But, in order to show still more minutely, how 
 probable it is that Rome will be literally destroyed by 
 fire, I will quote the testimony of those who have exam- 
 ined the very place on which she is enthroned, and have 
 discovered that Rome itself is placed upon the ashes of 
 a volcano. It is stated that the whole chain of the 
 Apennines, which stretches across Italy, is volcanic in 
 its origin. Gibbon himself, in speaking of Italy, de- 
 scribes it as containing beds of sulphur, and numerous 
 volcanoes, of which those of -5tna, Vesuvius, and Lipari 
 are but specimens. Again, an eminent German naturalist 
 says, " From Rome to Tivoli the soil is made up of vol- 
 canic ashes, and all the land about Rome is generally 
 volcanic." This seems as if it were a preparation for 
 the future judgments ; and her desolation shall be so 
 sudden that it shall come in one day, and so complete as 
 to "leave not a rack behind." It is followed by its 
 " smoke ascending up for ever and ever ;" and hence the 
 conclusion is forced upon the mind, that Rome is to be 
 overthrown by judgments, not to be converted by the 
 agency of the gospel, or to be exhausted by political as- 
 saults. She is literally to be consumed by fire. 
 
 Now, at this solemn and momentous hour, we read 
 that a voice is lifted up, " Come out of her, my people, 
 that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive 
 not of her plagues." I believe that that voice is sounding
 
 438 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 now through the length and breadth of the very land in 
 which we live. I might mention religious societies, and 
 the names of Protestant men, all of whom are known to 
 you, and must be revered by all Avho know them ; these 
 men are now lifting up this faithful warning calling 
 upon those in the midst of Rome, or who are infected 
 with the poison of her principles, to " come out of her, 
 that they be not partakers of her sins, and that they re- 
 ceive not of her plagues." How startling was that voice 
 which Robert M'Ghee lifted up in this very Hall some 
 years ago a disclosure that in healthier times would 
 have been followed by rigid examination. The Romish 
 powers showed they felt the irresistible collusiveness 
 of all that he proved by fastening upon the only error 
 he committed : the man of sin watched every charge he 
 made knew well that Protestant rulers would not list- 
 en, they were silent while reply was useless ; and were 
 only too glad when a misapprehension occurred, to have 
 a chance of escape from universal execration. Need I 
 quote the names of M 'Neile, and Stowell, and Hartwell 
 Home, and others that must be known to you, in order 
 to show the interest felt in this subject, and the response 
 that comes from many hearts in the present day ? Need 
 I refer to the conflict that has taken place in high places, 
 and to the symptoms that daily multiply, and show that 
 the last struggle in this country, between Protestantism, 
 as it is cherished by Protestant Churchmen and Protest- 
 ant Dissenters, and Popery, as it is held by the Papal 
 powers and the Puseyite Tractarian divines, is rapidly 
 approaching. 
 
 Let me notice another fact ; namely, that at the close 
 of the destruction of Rome, there is heard a new and re- 
 markable song, " Hallelujah, for the Lord God omni- 
 potent reigneth." " And again," it is added, " they said 
 Hallelujah, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever ;" 
 and, " I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, 
 saying, Alleluia ; salvation, and glory, and honour, and 
 power, unto the Lord our God." I showed you that the 
 drying up of the Euphrates is to prepare the way for 
 the conversion of the Jews. Now notice here, the first
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 439 
 
 Hebrew word, in the songs of the redeemed in the Apo- 
 calypse, occurs in this very passage, namely, Hallelujah : 
 all the expressions have been Greek before ; but now a 
 Hebrew voice is heard in the canticle of harmony, 
 sounding Hallelujah. I believe that this is just the ful- 
 filment of what I have sketched in a previous evening, 
 viz. the promises of the conversion of the Jews, their 
 restoration to their own land, and their worshipping 
 him on Zion, whom their forefathers crucified on Cal- 
 vary. And it is a most remarkable corroborative proof 
 of this, that Kimchi, a very celebrated Jewish com- 
 mentator, makes the following observation : " When 
 Papal Rome shall be desolated, then shall come the re- 
 demption of the people of Israel." A Jewish comment- 
 ator is led to the conviction, that the desolation of Rome 
 shall precede the immediate conversion of his people ; 
 and how glorious will that song be, when Jew and Gen- 
 tile shall combine to raise it: "Hallelujah, for the Lord 
 God omnipotent reigneth." I have heard the Hallelujah 
 chorus of Handel in this Hall, and I should go to hear it 
 again, if Englishmen would have the good taste and the 
 Christian principle to give up the barbarous and Gothic 
 practice of stamping approbation with their feet when 
 the God of heaven is praised in strains the most beau- 
 tiful and words the most holy ; but till that barbarous 
 and Gothic practice is utterly removed, I cannot feel as 
 I would wish to feel, when I listen to the sublime strains 
 of Handel, ministering their service to the sacred words 
 of the Apocalypse. But if to hear it from 500 voices in 
 this Hall be all but overpowering, how magnificent, how 
 glorious, will be the crash of harmony that shall echo 
 from the firmamental ceiling, and rebound and rever- 
 berate from the platform of the earth, when Jew and 
 Gentile, constituting one company by grace, shall cry, 
 with one heart, and as with one voice, " Hallelujah, for 
 the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ! " 
 
 I felt it, my dear friends, to be to me truly refreshing, 
 when I met, in one of the omnibuses of the City, a minis- 
 ter of the Church of England, who said to me, " I hear 
 that great crowds are in Exeter Hall listening to your
 
 440 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 preaching ; and," he added, " I have prayed that you 
 might be so guided and directed by the Spirit of God, 
 that not a few hearts might live as tokens of your faith- 
 fulness, and tributes to the grace of God." I desire and 
 pray to find it so. Not more than a third of those who 
 are crowded within this Hall can be accommodated 
 within the walls of my enlarged church : let me there- 
 fore speak of Christ while so many hear, and invite you, 
 in the language of this chapter, on this the last Sunday 
 but one on which I shall address you, to " the marriage 
 supper of the Lamb." Blessed are they who are invited 
 to that feast : " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to 
 the waters ; yea come, buy wine and milk without money 
 and without price." You have heard great and startling 
 truths ; those truths may have been mixed with human 
 errors : forgive the presence of the alloy, cherish and 
 be thankful for the gold forget the minister, think 
 only of the Master. My desire and effort has been to 
 interest your minds in God's word. Oh ! that I might 
 convey one quickening seed, to be an element of life to 
 some dead soul in this audience. How dreadful, dear 
 friends, if, after the truths you have heard, any of you 
 should perish ! I shall meet you all all without excep- 
 tion at the judgment-seat of God. Between me and 
 every man in this assembly, a tie has been knit by your 
 hearing and my speaking, which the blaze which con- 
 sumes great Babylon which the shock that convulses 
 the very universe which the light of the j udgment-day 
 shall not sever or destroy. You must answer for Avhat 
 you have heard. I must answer for what I have spoken. 
 And, oh ! dreadful the thought, if I should see some 
 countenance that I have gazed upon in this Hall, dark- 
 ened with the shadow of an everlasting eclipse driven 
 from that platform on which all destinies are wound up, 
 and the condition of all flesh settled irreversibly for ever. 
 No man, however, need perish ; salvation is free for 
 every one ; the blood of Jesus is accessible to every one ; 
 God waits to welcome you ; Christ asks, " Why will ye 
 die ?" He invites you, " Come unto me, all ye that labour 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." My dear
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL. 441 
 
 friends, I feel, when I address you, emotions too vast for 
 language to express. I can always speak most easily 
 when I feel least deeply. But when thoughts and sym- 
 pathies are too intense for utterance, then * * * * may 
 the Spirit of God kindle thoughts in your hearts that 
 may not die, and give me the happiness, and you the joy, 
 of surrounding the throne, nearer and nearer to which 
 we are drawing every day, and join with Jew and Gen- 
 tile in the Millennial blessedness, saying, " Hallelujah ! 
 for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." " Blessed are 
 they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb." 
 Amen and Amen.
 
 LECTURE XXIII. 
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE EFFUSION OF THE VIALS. 
 
 " And the seventh angel sounded ; and there were great voices in 
 heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for 
 ever and ever." REV. xi. 15. 
 
 " And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the 
 everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, 
 and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, 
 
 " Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him ; for 
 the hour of his judgment is come : and worship him that made 
 heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." 
 REV. xiv. 6, 7. 
 
 " And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire : and them 
 that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, 
 and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on 
 the sea of glass, having the harps of God. 
 
 " And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song 
 of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord 
 God Almighty ; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. 
 
 " Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name ? for 
 thou only art holy : for all nations shall come and worship 
 before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest." REV. 
 xv. 24. 
 
 THIS scene, which I shall endeavour to analyze, is in 
 some degree retrospective ; but it is a retrospect that 
 necessarily follows from the chronological position at 
 which we have arrived in our expositions of the Apoca- 
 lypse. Last Sunday evening I explained the seventh 
 vial. I showed the scenes it disclosed, and the prospects 
 which it leads us to anticipate. The first vial, or sym- 
 bol of judgment, began in 1792; the last vial is now 
 trembling in the angel's hand, or rather is pouring out 
 its contents ; its first sprinklings smite the earth, and at
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 443 
 
 this hour the nations begin to feel its influence, and 
 thrones to rock beneath the first of its vibrations. But 
 having dwelt, as you perceive, upon the seven vials, 
 which have been seven epitomes of judgment, seven suc- 
 cessive scenes of desolation inflicted on the eai'th, the 
 question will naturally occur to you, " What has become 
 of the Church of Christ all the while ?" We have heard 
 the crashes, and seen the effects of judgments upon the 
 world, as well as judgments upon Babylon, but where 
 has been " the hundred forty and four thousand," " the 
 bride of the Lamb," the true and spiritual Church, 
 " redeemed out of every kindred, and people, and tribe, 
 and tongue ? " Surely she has not perished. It is my 
 province to show you, parallel with the effusion of the 
 vials, the mystery of the Church of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ to point out beneath the turbid torrent that 
 bears darkening judgments on its bosom, a bright and 
 beautiful and silver streamlet, speeding onward in all 
 its pristine purity, to the infinite and everlasting main 
 to show you, amid the smoke that rises from the 
 judgments that overspread the earth, the bright sparks 
 that are the foretokens of the approaching glory, and 
 thus to let it appear, that when one hemisphere was 
 darkened by the clouds of righteous retribution, the 
 other hemisphere began to glow with the forecast light 
 of approaching day. 
 
 First, then, I explained, you recollect, that the seventh 
 seal was the epitome, or in brief, of the seven trumpets ; 
 and that the seventh trumpet was the epitome, or brief 
 description, of the seven vials ; the twenty-one con- 
 stituting the history of Christendom, and the seventh of 
 each being the abstract of the contents of the seven that 
 were to follow. Now, you will notice that, in the de- 
 scription of the seventh trumpet, the first passage read by 
 me is by way of anticipation the seventh trumpet being 
 an abstract of the contents of the seven vials. It is an 
 anticipatory song, an outburst of prophetic feeling, " the 
 kingdoms of this world are become," that is, when the 
 seven vials contained under the seventh trumpet are all 
 poured out, " the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ."
 
 444 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 This was anticipatory : no judgment comes upon the earth 
 that does not cast its shadow before, and no blessing 
 shines from heaven that does not reflect backward some 
 beams of the glory which constitutes that blessing ; and 
 therefore the Apocalyptic seer John, witnessing all the 
 desolations of the past, and catching in his prophetic 
 eye some bright and glowing visions of the future, burst 
 forth into the Pzean, the triumphant song, as if he al- 
 ready saw the great consummation arrive ; as if he said, 
 " The kingdoms of this world are no longer enslaved by 
 Satan, crushed by tyranny, infected by sin, but I see 
 them become the kingdoms of the Lord, and I hear their 
 song of praise, intimating that the reign of Satan and of 
 sin is terminated upon earth." 
 
 After this we have another symbol, to which I shall 
 specially allude ; and that is, that an angel, just after the 
 beginning of the pouring out of the vials, L e. of the 
 French Revolution, in 1793, an angel comes from heaven 
 a symbolic angel spreads his pinions on the air that 
 air, recollect, that I showed you last Sunday evening 
 was to be tainted and disturbed by the pouring out of the 
 seventh vial the angel spreads his wings on the air, 
 sweeps over the length and breadth of the globe, and he 
 carries in his mission, not judgment, as the preceding 
 trumpet angels did not desolation, as the vial angels 
 did but the glorious gospel of the blessed God, to preach 
 "to every nation and kindred, and tongue and people." 
 The point which I will specially attempt to prove this 
 morning is, that, contemporaneous with the pouring out 
 of the vials, and the fearful judgments that fell upon 
 apostate Christendom, there was an expansion of the 
 truths of the gospel, an outburst of Christian principle 
 and missionary zeal, unparalleled since the day of Pente- 
 cost itself. This, I think, is the explanation of the 
 angel flying through heaven with the everlasting gospel. 
 
 The third point to which I shall particularly allude, is 
 that beautiful and truly Apocalyptic picture, the harpers 
 harping with their harps upon the glassy sea a sea 
 mingled with fire. These harpers are descriled in the 
 original by a most peculiar expression. They are not
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 445 
 
 called merely conquerors, or those who have gotten the 
 victory over the beast, but they are called rtKwvras IK 
 TOV Srjpiov, not only conquerors over the beast, i. e. the 
 Papal power, as I have showed you, but also victorious 
 separatists from him. So that those harpers on the 
 glassy sea are not only conquerors over the beast and 
 I explained that the beast, as you may recollect, is the 
 Roman Catholic Apostacy and over the image of the 
 beast, the General Councils that reflect his mind and 
 sentiments and over the mark of the beast ; and the 
 number of the beast, and you cannot have forgotten the 
 word Xarttvoe, the letters of which, X, a, r, , i, r, o, c 
 make up the number 666, which is declared to be the 
 number of the beast, as I explained on a previous occa- 
 sion ; these, I say, are called not only conquerors over 
 him, but separatists from him, and that had the victory 
 over the number of his name : and thus I believe that 
 those harpers on the glassy sea are not only those who 
 deny the supremacy of the Pope of Rome, but those per- 
 sons who repudiate and abhor the peculiar principles of 
 the Church of Rome in all their shapes and degrees. The 
 Tractarians deny one great dogma in Popery, and almost 
 the only one the supremacy of the Pope. I admit they 
 are not Papists, but I contend they have got upon them 
 the mark of the beast, and will be numbered with him 
 in the hour of trial ; and if you desire to escape those 
 crushing and consuming judgments that are destined 
 utterly to overwhelm him, you must not only be sepa- 
 ratists from the supremacy of the Pope, but separatists 
 from his principles and his practices separatists from 
 all that is Popish, and allied with all that is Scriptural, 
 Evangelical, and Protestant. 
 
 Now, then, these harpers on the glassy sea mingled 
 with fire, are said to sing the song of Moses and of the 
 Lamb ; and this instantly refers us, by allusion, to that 
 beautiful song recorded in the book of Exodus. You 
 will remember that when the Israelites had passed the 
 Red Sea, they stood upon the opposite shore and sung 
 their sublime song of victory, as they looked across 
 the Red Sea that sea that was the promenade of the
 
 446 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 people of God, and the sepulchre of the chivalry and 
 chariots of Pharaoh with the pillar of fire by night 
 that flashed its splendour upon the hosts of Egypt, and 
 the pillar of cloud by day that concealed from them the 
 Israelites whom they pursued. It has been said also 
 that the Red Sea is so called from the effect of the sun's 
 rays shining upon it ; for an ancient writer says, " that 
 the mountains west of the Arabian Gulf, when the rays 
 of the sun rest upon their peaks, exhibit the appear- 
 ance of glowing coals, red with fire ; and the splendour 
 reflected from the mountain-tops dyes the sea with the 
 colour of red, or fire." The statement here of their 
 standing on the brink of the sea over which they had 
 passed in safety, and singing the song of Moses and of 
 the Lamb, conveys an allusion to a fact in the history of 
 Israel, which becomes typical of a fact true of our 
 country, and rendered probable by a consideration of the 
 chronology of the epoch to which I am now directing 
 your attention. 
 
 It appears to me, that Great Britain and the shores 
 of England were, in the antitype, what the shores of the 
 Red Sea and the triumphant Israelites were in the 
 type, during the outpouring of the vial judgments upon 
 Europe. Is it no evidence of this, that when the great 
 destroyer swept Europe on a wing that never tired 
 when, from Moscow onward to Madrid, every capital 
 blazed with revolutionary fires when the cup of trem- 
 bling was placed in every nation's hand, and every na- 
 tion was constrained to drink it to the dregs is there 
 no fulfilment of the Apocalyptic allusion in the fact, 
 that we alone were unscathed ? We heard the distant 
 vibrations only borne on the winds, of the earthquake 
 that hurled down thrones, upset dynasties, and cleft 
 kingdoms in twain ; we saw but the reflected glow across 
 the channel of the sea of those fires that blazed over all 
 the continent of Europe ; and the Christians of England, 
 in their chapels and in their churches, stood upon this 
 side of the glassy sea, and praised God that they were 
 saved from the judgments that overwhelmed the rest of 
 the world, as they heard but the echo of the sound of
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 447 
 
 falling thrones, and saw merely the smoke of crumbling 
 dynasties. And that song shows us, from the very na- 
 ture of it, that this interpretation is not an imaginary 
 one. The children of Israel thus sang : " The Lord is 
 my strength and my song ; He also is become my salva- 
 tion ; He is my God, and I will prepare him an habita- 
 tion ; my father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord 
 is a man of war ; the Lord is his name," &c. Exodus xv. 
 1 19. You will see that this song well represents the 
 feeling that many true Christians expressed, and most 
 Christians entertained, when they saw this isle, built 
 up in the bosom of the deep, begin to be most gloriously 
 illuminated with the rays of an expanding gospel, at that 
 time when scarcely a nation on the whole continent of 
 Europe was exempted from the destroying scourge ; and 
 when the song of Moses speaks of Pharaoh and his cap- 
 tains buried in the Red Sea, who can have forgotten the 
 constant cry of Napoleon, for " ships and commerce : " 
 and who can be ignorant, who has read Alison's History 
 of Europe, that never did he bring his fleet to sea with- 
 out the flag of Old England waving victorious over its 
 wreck ; so much so, that our country, for years upon 
 years, never advanced but to gain splendid victories, 
 and never retreated but to cover its retreat with a 
 greater and a brighter glory than its advance ? 
 
 On the supposition, then, that this period was the 
 period when our country was thus victorious when the 
 captains of the great destroyer were overturned, and all 
 his hosts buried in the depths of the sea, and when we, 
 standing on our isle, separated from all the rest of the 
 earth, celebrated God's mercies, and thanked him for his 
 goodness, and felt under a deep sense of responsibility 
 our obligations to him I proceed to show the next 
 feature, and which is a most important and interesting 
 feature in my statement, that, contemporaneous with the 
 judgments inflicted by the vials upon Christendom 
 contemporaneous with Britain's separation from the rest 
 of the world, and alone echoing with the song of victory, 
 the song of Moses merged in the song of the. Lamb 
 from the year 1793 to the present hour, the angel
 
 448 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 spread his wings, and has continued to carry the blessed 
 gospel to every creature under heaven. In order now to 
 show you this, and thereby to fix more completely the 
 justice and accuracy of those data which we have already 
 established, I take leave to notice that God never begins 
 a work in this dispensation, without an instrument. You 
 will recollect the evidence of this at three great epochs. 
 You remember when I was treating, at the commence- 
 ment of my course, upon the rise of the Apostacy, the 
 mysterious efficacy attributed to the sacraments, when 
 one was made an exorcism, and the other began to be 
 worshipped as an idol, that I mentioned as one of the 
 God-sealed in opposition to the man-sealed, one of the 
 God-baptized in opposition to the man-baptized, the 
 name and character of St. Augustine and that the in- 
 fluence of Augustine's evangelical religion was felt 
 throughout Europe, even onward to the Reformation 
 itself. You will also recollect that at a second crisis, 
 when the darkness was no less dense, God raised up an- 
 other instrument in Europe, to carry on that work which 
 had been long overspread by superstition, and had almost 
 perished from the earth, the great work of the everlast- 
 ing gospel, that lion-hearted and indomitable man, Martin 
 Luther. We are now come to the third crisis : it seems 
 almost invidious to specify, and I should not dare to have 
 done so, if Mr. Elliott, on grounds that seem to me truly 
 satisfactory, had not previously done so ; he thinks, and 
 I thoroughly concur with him, that the great instrument 
 employed for first leavening all classes with the truth, 
 and commencing and carrying on to a very great degree 
 the missionary movement, was that singularly eminent 
 and truly spiritual man, the late William Wilberforce, 
 Esq. You have perhaps heard so little of the man, that 
 some, at least, may not be aware of the mighty part that 
 that great and eminent man played in reviving religion 
 in this country. It seems to me very interesting to no- 
 tice, that in the 4th century a bishop was used to revive 
 religion, in the 16th century an Augustinian monk was 
 employed to do it, and in the 19th century a Christian 
 layman ; and here I cannot but notice, too, what I think
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 449 
 
 it is only dutiful to Christians of the present day to im- 
 press, that the clergy are not the Church. I believe in 
 this matter there is a leaven of heresy among the laity 
 which ought to be rebuked as firmly as the heresy that 
 grows among the clergy ; the Christian people are the 
 Church, and the clergy are only its leaders. Would you 
 call the officers the army ? No, you see the absurdity of 
 this ; the soldiers, you would say, are the army, the 
 officers are but the leaders ? Why, then, should you call 
 the clergy the Church ? When a person lias been or- 
 dained it is common to use the obnoxious expression, 
 "he has entered the Church;" enter the Church 1 he 
 ought to have entered it long before he applies to be or- 
 dained. Christians, you are the Church ; the ministers 
 are the leaders ; an enlightened people will be the best 
 guarantee for an enlightened clergy ; and the Bible in 
 the hands of the many is the best pledge that they shall 
 not be deprived of it by the traditions of the few. 
 
 Having noticed, then, Wilberforce as the leading spirit 
 in the third revival and restoration of vital and scriptural 
 religion, I will now show you what was the character of 
 the man as given by his contemporaries of various politi- 
 cal parties. Lord Erskine made this remark on him, 
 " Wilberforce urged on the lingering progress of the 
 human mind more than any other man." His biogra- 
 phers, one of whom is a bishop, said, " Wilberforce was 
 the centre of a great moral system, and unquestionably 
 gave an impulse to the age." Madame de Stael says, 
 " Wilberforce is the man the most remarkable of the 
 whole of England." He had great mental power he 
 had vast parliamentary influence ; and Pitt, the cele- 
 brated conservative minister, who was his intimate friend, 
 gave this opinion, " Of all men I know, Wilberforce 
 seems to me to have the most natural and effective elo- 
 quence." I quote these remarks as tributes to the 
 strength of his genius. I admit, that genius without 
 grace would have made him as powerful for evil as he 
 was powerful for good. But in him the two were com- 
 bined ; his genius was consecrated by his religion, and 
 all his influence was wielded for God. When, and how, 
 it may be asked, did he become a Christian ? I do not 
 2 G
 
 450 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 know that his son, who is a bishop, would like to confess 
 it. I know that many who are Tractarian, which I be- 
 lieve the bishop is not, would desire this part of his bio- 
 graphy to be concealed, but dutifulness to truth compels 
 us to declare, that Wilberforce, who moved the age and 
 impressed on it the influence of Christian feeling, was 
 converted to God by reading the production of a Dis- 
 senter, namely, Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Re- 
 ligion in the Soul. God thus shows us he will not have 
 man to glory in sects or in systems. On the Apocalyp- 
 tic stage, and in its solemn drama, distinctions of sect 
 and denominational system are treated as non-entities, 
 great evangelical truths alone are regarded as substantial, 
 gre&t, and enduring. 
 
 To show more clearly the character of Wilberforce, I 
 will allude to his most remarkable work ; a work I 
 would recommend every one in this Hall to possess and 
 study, " Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianity," 
 edited by Bishop Wilson, the eminently pious and Pro- 
 testant bishop of Calcutta. Dr. Wilson states, in the 
 preface to this work, " Never perhaps did any volume by 
 a layman on a religious subject produce a deeper or more 
 sudden effect. It came upon the whole world of states- 
 men and literati and divines quite by surprise. It was 
 a thing unprecedented for a leading parliamentary speak- 
 er to publish any considerable work, much less a work 
 on religion. Every one talked of it every one was 
 attracted by its eloquence. It was acknowledged that 
 such an important work had not appeared for a cen- 
 tury," p. xvii. 
 
 It is eminently desirable to reach the mind and secure 
 the convictions of the higher classes on the subject of 
 Divine truth ; their conversion is of great moment. It 
 is quite true, that three thousand peasants are just as 
 precious in the sight of God, and their souls are just as 
 dear to him, as three thousand of the highest nobles in 
 the world : but if one can only leaven with the truths of 
 the everlasting gospel those who occupy prominent and 
 powerful places in the land, it is plain that one such per- 
 son, brought to feel the force and to espouse the interests 
 of Divine truth, will send around him an influence for
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 451 
 
 good the most powerful, an influence which distant 
 churches and statesmen, otherwise inaccessible, may feel. 
 It is a law, almost universal, that all influence descends, 
 it very rarely ascends : it is the rare thing that, when the 
 masses become Christian, the great men immediately be- 
 come so ; but when the distinguished and noble men be- 
 come Christian, how frequently do you observe a transform- 
 ing influence instantly descend, and shoot like an electric 
 spark through the population, and create, by the blessing 
 of God, a moral if not a religious people ; and thus it is 
 that there is reflected far and near the influence let down 
 from a religious court and throne. Hence, my dear 
 friends, we ought to make it a special subject of prayer, 
 not only in public, but in private, that our most gracious 
 Queen may be, what I believe she is, a Christian and a 
 Protestant ; and that those that are around her throne, 
 lords and senators, may be truly Christians too ; and that, 
 when they open their lips upon religious questions, they 
 may not fear to refer to God's word as alone decisive 
 that word that settles all religious disputes, and gives just 
 and true conclusions on those points which unaided rea- 
 son never can attain to. 
 
 The Apocalyptic vials, as we have seen, began to be 
 poured out in 1793, emitting the judgments that over- 
 whelmed Europe, and awed, though they could not con- 
 vert, the nations of the earth ; and about this very period, 
 when the eclipse was deepest, that book, which was to 
 be associated with the expansion as well as the revival of 
 true Christianity in England, and indeed the world, made 
 its appearance. Bishop Wilson proceeds : " As a noble 
 appeal to a degenerate age, as a work which forms an 
 era in the history of the times, we must go back in order 
 to find a parallel to it to the primitive Church." 
 
 Such is the testimony of Bishop Wilson to this very 
 remarkable production ; and I believe that Bishop Wilson 
 either has not studied prophecy, or thought of connecting 
 Wilberforce's work with it, at least, he has not expressed 
 his acquiescence in the prophetic views that Mr. Elliott 
 has so clearly and, I think, so conclusively established. 
 
 The immediate effect of this great work was, by the 
 grace of God, a new and rapid spread, in the minds of 
 2 a 2
 
 452 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 statesmen, senators, and Christians, of Bible and evan- 
 gelical religion. Inquiry and excitement followed apa- 
 thy, religion grew into absorbing importance, and be- 
 came the topic of discussion in every coterie ; and the 
 instant that people felt they were Christians, that instant 
 they believed it their duty to become missionaries. As 
 soon as they felt they were saints, so soon they saw that they 
 incurred the responsibilities of stewards : they believed 
 then as in every kindred movement, they could not claim 
 the gospel as selfishly their own, and withhold it from the 
 masses that needed it ; accordingly, no sooner had th&t 
 work exerted its mighty influence in the conviction and 
 conversion of souls, than the angel went forth, according 
 to the second Apocalyptic passage I have read, spread- 
 ing his wings upon the air, and carrying the everlasting 
 gospel to every kindred, and tribe, and people, and tongue. 
 You ask for the evidence of this ? Facts are our proofs. 
 Evidence is so full and so striking, that he that runs may 
 read it. The Baptist Missionary Society, like the high- 
 est Alpine peak, caught the first rays of the rising sun, 
 having been founded about the year 1 793, the very com- 
 mencement of the great French Revolution. It is an 
 honour to that Society to have been thus first in the field. 
 I congratulate it ; I forgive its differences Avith me in 
 minor matters, on the ground of its advocacy of that 
 glorious cause, the cause of missions, which shall burn 
 and brighten till Christ come with his many crowns to 
 take the kingdom to himself, and reign from sea to sea. 
 After the Baptist Society the London Missionary Society 
 emerged, like another Alpine peak, burning with the 
 rays of the rising sun, and in the rivalry of Christian 
 love sent forth its faithful missionaries in 1795. Im- 
 mediately after the London Missionary Society the Wes- 
 leyan Missionary Society appeared, in the year 1800, and 
 has become one of the most powerful, and not the least 
 successful, of the whole. Close upon this followed an 
 institution not the least important or least blessed, 
 the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has cir- 
 culated twenty millions of copies of the word of God, 
 up to the year 1847, and has translated the Bible into 
 nearly 140 tongues almost all the tongues of all the na-
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 453 
 
 tions of the earth. The biographer of Wilberforce says, 
 " amid the din of warlike preparations, the foundation- 
 stone was laid of this institution which was to leaven 
 all nations with the principles of peace." We have, 
 following these in bright and glorious succession, the 
 Church Missionary Society, which has been eminently 
 blessed amid the missionary institutions of the earth, and 
 on whose agents in every land, especially in India, has 
 rested no ordinary benediction. Wilberforce saw these 
 beautiful gems emerging from the night, and sparkling 
 in the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, with no 
 sectarian or exclusive feelings. In the midst of the 
 Parliament of England he made the remark, which it 
 was perilous to make at that day, and which it might 
 not be safe from sneers and scoffs to make even at the 
 present day though, judging from recent debates, one 
 must admit there seems to be more Christianity in modern 
 than in ancient Parliamentary debates the magnani- 
 mous remark respecting the Baptist Society, and its de- 
 voted champion, Dr. Carey : " I do not know," said 
 Wilberforce, " a finer instance of the moral sublime than 
 that a poor cobbler, working at his stall, should have 
 conceived the idea of converting the heathen to Christi- 
 anity : yet such was Dr. Carey : Milton planning Para- 
 dise Lost, in his old age and blindness, was nothing to 
 that poor cobbler at his stall." Such was the catholic 
 and just eulogy pronounced in Parliament, amid the 
 acquiescence of all, by Wilberforce on one of the most 
 devoted servants of the earliest of the Missionary Socie- 
 ties of Britain. 
 
 After this appeared the Jews' Society, founded in the 
 year 1809, designed to expound our duties and obliga- 
 tions to God's ancient people as one of the very first re- 
 sponsibilities that arise from the experience of the power 
 of the gospel of Christ. Then there was in Scotland the 
 Scotch Missionary Society, composed of Scottish Church- 
 men and Dissenters, who afterwards separated, peacefully 
 and not without great advantage to both ; for the Church 
 of Scotland, according to the plan of that eminent and 
 devoted clergyman, Dr. Inglis, adopted her magnificent 
 scheme, the Foreign Missions, which she has prosecuted
 
 454 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 every year with increasing energy ; and I cannot but 
 state, in this place, a striking evidence of the overruling 
 providence of God, in his providential dealings, the 
 late unhappy disputes that recently took place in Scot- 
 land, and which ended in the secession from that Church 
 of many pious ministers, viz. the interesting fact, that the 
 seceding ministers have increased their funds for mis- 
 sionary purposes to a great extent, and the income of the 
 Established Church for missionary purposes has been, 
 what at the time I predicted it would be, positively 
 greater in 1847 than it was before the secession in 1843. 
 Thus out of our sins even God educes good, and over- 
 rules the disputes of imperfect Christians, who see 
 through a glass darkly, to the clearer development and 
 more rapid progress of his own great and holy cause. 
 
 After the missionary spirit had been thus excited in 
 our country, the gospel was preached in the East and 
 West Indies, in Africa, New Zealand, New South Wales, 
 in Greenland, and in North America. The Brainerds, 
 the Martyns, the Careys, the Hebers, will all occur to 
 you as eminent missionaries of the everlasting gospel ; 
 who spread the joyful sound 
 
 " From Greenland's icy mountains 
 To India's coral strand ; " 
 
 till at length there is scarcely a nation on the earth that 
 has not heard the tidings of redeeming love ; a fact that 
 teaches us the solemn conclusion I have endeavoured to 
 establish, that when the gospel shall have been preached 
 in every nation, and ended not in the conversion of all, 
 but in being a witness to every nation, then shall the 
 end come. 
 
 Now, let me ask, where is there not evidence of this 
 apostolic outburst of missionary zeal ? what nation is 
 there that has not been refreshed by its influences ? If 
 you go to the isles that lie on the bosom of the great 
 Pacific you will hear the heralds of Christianity there. 
 Amid the sultry air of Hindostan, or the cinnamon 
 groves of Ceylon, you may find the preacher of the 
 glorious gospel ; or you will see him preaching by the 
 rivers of India, or in the plague-smitten atmosphere of
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 455 
 
 Turkey praying amid the ruins of Athens, or having 
 his pulpit on the rocky heights of Mount Lebanon ; you 
 may trace the course of the missionary with the Arab 
 in his " ship of the desert," the laborious and patient 
 camel ; or on the scorched plains of Africa, finding shelter 
 from its burning sun beneath the palm-tree's shade ; or 
 sharing his coarse food with the Laplander, or travers- 
 ing with the Greenlander his everlasting snows ; amid 
 the Rocky Mountains, or amid Tartar hordes in the 
 Arab's tent and on the Cossack's steppes amid the 
 prairies of Western America, or in the lanes and by- 
 ways and alleys of London, addressing rich and poor, 
 great and small, Jew and Gentile, barbarian kings and 
 savage tribes ; and wherever he has spoken he has left 
 the evidence of the power of a preached gospel, and the 
 impress of a God, who has blessed his efforts ; till, ani- 
 mated by the results, we begin to anticipate the day for 
 which we pray, when 
 
 " Arabia's desert ranger 
 
 To Christ shall bow the knee, 
 
 And Ethiopian stranger 
 
 His glory come and see ; 
 
 When he shall have dominion 
 
 O'er river, sea, and shore, 
 
 Far as the eagle's pinion 
 
 Or dove's light wing can soar." 
 
 I have thus, then, shown you, first of all, our country 
 triumphing in its immunity from the judgments that 
 darkened the rest of Europe, an immunity secured by its 
 attachment to the truth, and personated in the harpers 
 on the glassy sea, singing the song or victorious anthem 
 that commemorated their safety. I have shown you, next, 
 the commencement of a new era in the spread of Bible 
 religion, beginning about 1793 or 1795, through the in- 
 strumentality of the excellent and devoted Wilberforce. 
 I have described, as the result of this revived missionary 
 spirit, the angel flying with the everlasting gospel ; that 
 is, the different religious societies thus symbolized, spread- 
 ing the Scriptures throughout the whole earth, and 
 preaching the gospel unto every creature. 
 
 I believe, then, my dear friends, in the shortness of 
 the time that remains ; I believe it to be very short :
 
 456 APOCALVPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 but we are not of those who will therefore show them- 
 selves slack in the use of means. If I were told by a 
 voice from heaven, that in three years Christ will come, this 
 intimation would not make me relax one solitary duty. I 
 would take leases, if I felt that it was in the way of duty 
 to do so ; I would enter upon engagements plainly dutiful 
 in the providence of God ; I would go on precisely as I 
 am going on now, fearing God and loving my fellow- 
 men. It is our duty not to come out of the world me- 
 chanically, but to be severed from the world spiritually ; 
 not to desert our place like cowards that run from the 
 field, but to stand at those posts, where our great Cap- 
 tain has placed us, to fight the good fight of faith, and to an- 
 ticipate his return right speedily, and to be supported and 
 cheered by the anticipation of the glorious crown, which 
 the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give us at that day. 
 And because the time seems to me to be short because 
 the hour of judgment looms and darkens like a terrific 
 cloud upon the distant horizon, because things seen are 
 on the verge of removal, I feel only more compelled to 
 contribute more largely to preach more heartily and 
 to pray more fervently for a blessing upon all our great 
 missionary institutions. I cannot rest while I see British 
 literature studied on the banks of the Ganges, and read on 
 those of the Mississippi and the Missouri while I hear 
 of British travellers penetrating all rivers, and extending 
 their influence and transactions to all coasts and tribes 
 while I see our sails whiten every shore, and our ships 
 ride upon their shadows in every harbour without mak- 
 .ing commensurate efforts to save and bless the nations of 
 the earth ; the nearness of the advent makes me feel the 
 more the duty of praying and of toiling, that wherever 
 our conquering standard has been unfurled, or our victo- 
 rious drum has been heard, the one may precede the ban- 
 ners 'of salvation, and the other be a prelude to the 
 everlasting jubilee, and that the armies of England, to 
 whatever land they may direct their march, may be but 
 the van of the army of Christ, which shall follow after 
 to nobler and more lasting victories, until it come to pass 
 that wheresoever Old England's power is felt, there men 
 may feel and taste her mercies too.
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 457 
 
 My dear friends, the only balm for the world, whether 
 at home or abroad, is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Were that gospel universally felt, and its principles 
 universally practised, there would be few wrongs to be 
 redressed, because there would be few inflicted ; our 
 prisons might be turned into churches, our policemen 
 into beadles ; the whole land would be transformed, men 
 would live happy, and would go down to their graves as 
 the pearl-diver of Ceylon goes down into the ocean, only 
 to come up laden with precious treasures, to breathe the 
 air and bask in the glorious sunshine of immortality. 
 
 In concluding this retrospect of missionary feeling, 
 coeval with judicial visitations, let me ask you, not are 
 you curiously inquiring into chronology, but seriously 
 and prayerfully looking into your own hearts ? If the 
 Lord be at hand if, as I believe, without saying you 
 are not Christians if you do not concur with me if, as I 
 believe, and shall endeavour to show, Christ's advent is 
 to be, not post-millennial but pre-millennial, if we are on 
 the very verge, a few years only intervening, of the first 
 resurrection from the dead if all things are rushing to 
 that august and solemn crisis and does it not seem, if 
 you look around you, as if every man stirred his ener- 
 gies in his peculiar walk, as if he felt the day is short, 
 and that we shall scarce have time left to finish what we 
 have to do ? Does it not seem as if all men were hast- 
 ening with express speed to that consummation of the 
 nearness of which they have a deep presentiment ? If 
 this be so, are you prepared for it ? Has the gospel taught 
 you to lean in faith and confidence on Christ ? Has grace 
 touched your souls and transformed them by its touch ? 
 None but living men will survive that crisis none but 
 living men men quickened by the Spirit of God, can 
 then lift up their heads, and know their "redemption draw- 
 eth nigh." While I shrink from the vagaries into which 
 that noble-hearted, but misguided man, Edward Irving, 
 fell while I can have no sympathy with his wild and 
 extravagant dreams or prophecy still less with his 
 awful language about the human nature of Jesus our 
 Lord, desiring to be silent whei*e God's word is silent ; 
 yet I believe that the voice that has been lifted up by
 
 458 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 many faithful men within the last twenty years, is God's 
 own voice, speaking solemnly in tones of mercy and 
 warning to an indifferent and careless world : " Prepare 
 to meet your God ! " Let me ask you, then, Are you 
 ready ? Is your foot upon the Rock of ages ? Is your robe 
 washed in the precious blood of Jesus ? Are you God- 
 baptized, and not merely man-baptized ? What is Chris- 
 tianity to you ? Is it a mere collection of fables for school- 
 men to fight about, or is it life and power to the soul ? 
 Has the gospel made you, my dear friends, what it ought 
 to have made you, conscientious in business, temperate 
 in pleasure, humble in prosperity, patient in suffering, 
 religious in all things ? Do you feel duty to be sacred, 
 though all men should scoff at it ? Do you deem it im- 
 perative, though nobody should accompany you in the 
 discharge of it ? In other words, can you stand alone if 
 conscious God is not far off? You must die alone you 
 must be judged alone you must bear the sentence alone. 
 Can you stand in this world without leaning upon Fa- 
 thers, or bishops, or Councils, or traditions, with nothing 
 beneath your feet but the Rock of everlasting ages, and 
 nothing in the horizon before you, but " a crown of glory 
 that fadeth not away ? " If so, how blessed are you : you 
 may lift up your heads, for the lightning that rends the 
 sky, and startles with its fires the unbelieving millions, 
 shall only be the chariot that shall waft you to your 
 home, and the judgments that overwhelm the world 
 shall be to you but the signal that bids you let loose and 
 make for a haven of everlasting and glorious peace. 
 
 I shall preach one Sunday more in Exeter Hall, and I 
 must again tell this vast audience, who for six months have 
 listened to the gospel within these walls, that you have in- 
 curred most solemn and weighty responsibility. Is it not 
 a very solemn fact, that not one person who has heard me 
 preach the gospel, however humbly I may have preached 
 it, who has not been placed in a new position of respon- 
 sibility ; and there is not one person whose case and my 
 case will not be compared together at the judgment-seat 
 of Christ. It is calculated that upwards of 5000 have 
 together listened in this Hall at each service : it is pro- 
 bable that we shall never all meet again upon earth, I
 
 THE CHURCH DURING THE VIALS. 459 
 
 mean after this Hall is closed ; but we must all meet in 
 the vast congregation that will be assembled at that day ; 
 and then each man's heart will not only be transparent to 
 his Maker, but it will be transparent likewise to his 
 neighbour. You will see what I have thought, and I 
 shall see what you have thought. Oh ! gracious God, 
 forbid that any one that has heard in this Hall the over- 
 tures and invitations of a free gospel, should cry out at 
 that day " to the mountains, cover me, and to the hills, 
 conceal me from the wrath of the Lamb : " yet, my dear 
 friends, as sure as this Bible is true, there are but two 
 alternatives; you must become new men converted 
 men sanctified men, or you must be ruined for ever ; 
 you must take your place with the Lamb, or with those 
 who are opposed to him : men perish not only because 
 they have rejected the gospel, but because they have 
 neglected the gospel : " how shall we escape," says the 
 Apostle, "if we neglect," not reject, "if we neglect so 
 great salvation." The oftener we hear and repudiate 
 the truth, the more prepared we become to reject it 
 again ; our insensibility increases in the ratio of our 
 neglected opportunities. The peasant that lives near a 
 waterfall, who was unable to sleep at first on account of 
 its roar, becomes at length so habituated to it, that it 
 acts as a lullaby, and he sleeps the more soundly. This 
 is the result of ever hearing and never obeying the 
 truth. Brethren, hear as responsible beings ;~-hail every 
 opportunity of learning what is the will of God as a 
 solemn moment ; meet it with prayer, and concentrated 
 attention, and patient listening, and diligent practice.
 
 LECTURE XXIV. 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT PRE-MILLENNIAL. 
 
 ' And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse ; and he 
 that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in right- 
 eousness he doth judge and make war. 
 
 " His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many 
 crowns ; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he 
 himself. 
 
 " And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood : and his 
 name is called The Word of God. 
 
 " And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white 
 horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. 
 
 " And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he 
 should smite the nations : and he shall rule them with a rod of 
 iron : and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath 
 of Almighty God. 
 
 " And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, 
 
 KlNG OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. 
 
 " And I saw an angel standing in the sun ; and he cried with a 
 loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of hea- 
 ven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the 
 great God ; 
 
 " That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and 
 the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them 
 that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, 
 both small and great. 
 
 " And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their 
 armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on 
 the horse, and against his army. 
 
 " And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that 
 wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that 
 had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped 
 his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning 
 with brimstone. 
 
 " And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon 
 the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth : and all the 
 fowls were filled with their flesh." REV. xix. 11 21.
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT PRE -MILLENNIAL. 461 
 
 "* And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of 
 the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 
 
 " And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the 
 Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, 
 
 " And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set 
 a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till 
 the thousand years should be fulfilled : and after that he must 
 be loosed a little season." REV. xx. 1 3. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to open up that startling and 
 remarkable symbol, the seventh vial, the record of which 
 is contained, as you may recollect, in the sixteenth chap- 
 tern where it is said, " The seventh angel poured out his 
 viahinto the air, and there came a great voice out of the 
 temple of heaven, saying, It is done." I showed you 
 that soon after that vial is poured out we may expect the 
 destruction of Rome, the great central metropolis of the 
 Papal Apostacy. I showed you, next, that after the un- 
 clean spirits had contaminated all the nations of the 
 earth and I gave you proof of their powerful and pro- 
 gressive action the voice would be raised like a trumpet- 
 note of warning, as if the great Lord of the universe 
 had descended and made it thrill through the hearts of 
 universal humanity, "I come as a thief." After that 
 I expressed my sense of difficulties in determining 
 whether we are now under the dregs of the sixth vial, or 
 at the commencement of the pouring out of the seventh. 
 I stated that the first action of the seventh vial would be 
 upon the air, and I explained to you that every symbol 
 in the Apocalypse had not only its figurative meaning, 
 which is its real and its ultimate one, but also its literal 
 meaning, which is its subordinate and intermediate one ; 
 and that, whilst the influence of this vial on the air 
 would denote political, social, moral, and ecclesiastical 
 revolutions, it would also denote a literal disturbance of 
 the air which we breathe, by storm and hurricane, by the 
 propagation, probably, of pestilence, cholera, influenza, 
 and disease, all of which would be an appeal from Heaven 
 to a world that was dead in trespasses and sins to arise 
 and prepare to meet their God.* I also made the inci- 
 
 * If the recent continental convulsions are the first heavings of 
 the last great earthquake, of the seventh vial, as I think they are, I
 
 462 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 dental remark a remark of great practical importance, 
 with respect to those contagious diseases, one of which 
 we have recently passed through, and another of which 
 we may most certainly expect that the real explanation 
 of them is that they are, first, judgments from Heaven ; 
 secondly, emanations from the air ; and lastly, in no re- 
 spect contagious from person to person. Since I made 
 that remark I have received from my friend, Dr. Milroy, 
 a pamphlet proving, by incontestable facts and evidence, 
 that the cholera is not contagious by ordinary contact in 
 the popular meaning of that term. Therefore, my dear 
 friends, if that disease should visit us, and if you should 
 be called to the bed-sides of the infected, do not shrink ; 
 go and soothe them with the last offices of humanity and 
 the first consolations of Christianity ; and I can say, by 
 the grace of God, if any of my own people are visited by 
 this influence of the tainted air, I shall just as freely 
 visit the victim of the cholera, as I visit the victim of 
 any ordinary and every-day disease. Having stated, as 
 another result of the pouring out of this vial, that the 
 great metropolis of the Romish Apostacy is destined to 
 be overwhelmed, I added next my view of the prediction 
 that " the cities of the nations " should fall, and in their 
 fall there would ensue not only the desolation of what 
 was corrupt, but the destruction of much that is beautiful 
 and good. I stated, among other things, my belief 
 that the Established Churches of the empire will share 
 in the tremendous crash, and whether you regard them 
 as good, or whether you denounce them as evil, their 
 doom is sealed their destruction is at hand. Many 
 must lament the havoc as the loss of the useful, the 
 beautiful, and the good ; others will rejoice at it as the 
 removal of what they think an obstruction to the spread 
 of the gospel ; but whether we be Churchmen, or whe- 
 ther we be Dissenters, let us learn, the one to cease to 
 idolize them, and the other to attack them ; the time is 
 
 may notice the statement in the Times of this day, (June 18th, 
 1848,) that a storm of lightning and tempest has overflowed and 
 torn up Germany a week ago, unparalleled in fury and extent in 
 the memory of man; its mere droppings, like the remote in- 
 fluences of the earthquake itself, reached us on June 19th.
 
 CHRIST'S SECOXD ADVENT FEE-MILLENNIAL. 463 
 
 short, let us merge the microscopic points on which we 
 differ, and melt them into the majestic and glorious 
 things in which we are at one. 
 
 I now come to the events that immediately precede 
 and begin the millennial kingdom of our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus. And entering on that great and beautiful subject 
 to-night, I hope to complete it, and the main mass of my 
 lectures on the Apocalypse, as far as historically ex- 
 plained, next Sabbath evening, having yet another Sab- 
 bath to worship with you in Exeter Hall. 
 
 A voice of praise, I told you in the course of my last 
 lecture, arose on the destruction of Home, in which were 
 heard sounding in heaven the words, " Hallelujah, for 
 the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." I noticed the fact 
 that this is the first Hebrew tone heard in the universal 
 jubilee, there being in all the songs of the redeemed 
 prior to this, no Hebrew accent. But in this song of joy 
 sung at the destruction of Rome, we hear, " Hallelujah, 
 for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." I showed this 
 to be the fulfilment of prophecy I had previously ex- 
 plained, the conversion of the Jews, manifested in their 
 deep-toned voices blending with the voices of the Gen- 
 tiles, and sounding from the floor of earth to the firma- 
 ment of heaven, " Hallelujah, for the Lord God omni- 
 potent reigneth," the expression of their gratitude. We 
 then find heaven opened, and Christ, the King of glory, 
 descending on a white horse, the symbol of uninterrupted 
 triumph, prosperity, and grandeur ; we find the saints of 
 God accompanying him on his progress, and he himself 
 is then manifested to be in fact, what he had been pro- 
 claimed to be in revelation, and was predicted to be in 
 prophecy, " King of kings, and Lord of lords." We then 
 find an angel standing on the sun. This denotes the 
 universality of his appearance, for we cannot conceive a 
 spot in the universe more central than the sun, nor can 
 we conceive an object to become more universally visible 
 than some one standing on or in the sun. This may not 
 be literally fulfilled, though this is not improbable ; it is 
 doubtless figurative, and means, that there will be a 
 universal indication to all the inhabitants of the earth to 
 come and gather themselves together unto the great feast
 
 464 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of the great God. This feast is, of course, a symbol ; 
 we have its illustration in the prophet Ezekiel, who tells 
 us, in chap, xxxix., "And thou, son of man, thus saith the 
 Lord God, Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every 
 beast of the field, Assemble yourselves and come ; gather 
 yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacri- 
 fice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of 
 'Israel, that ye may eat flesh and drink blood. Ye shall 
 eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the 
 princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of 
 bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bash an. And ye shall 
 eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, 
 of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you. Thus 
 ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, 
 with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the 
 Lord God." The Apocalyptic allusion is clearly illus- 
 trated in that of Ezekiel. Both indicate the utter de- 
 struction of the enemies of Christ the incontestable 
 fulfilment of awful prophecies, and of yet more awful 
 threateninga. 
 
 We read that, after the destruction of Rome, the Papal 
 Antichrist will himself be consumed with all his con- 
 verts, finally and completely, together. After this de- 
 struction and utter overthrow of its Antichristian head, 
 the Millennium, as described in the 20th chapter, 
 where the angel comes down from heaven, and lays hold 
 on the old dragon or serpent, and chains him for a 
 thousand years, will commence, and to the outlines of 
 this I shall now specially turn your attention.* 
 
 First, an angel comes from heaven, lays hold on Satan, 
 and chains him for a thousand years. We know not 
 whether that angel is figurative, as the chains must be ; 
 but this we are sure of, that during the period described 
 as a thousand years, whether these be literal, or whether 
 they be prophetical, Satan, who is a person, the archangel 
 fallen, the great seducer of the saints, shall be chained, 
 or fettered, or repressed from infecting the earth. At 
 present he is not possessed of omnipresence, but he is 
 possessed of ceaseless activity, he " goes about seeking 
 
 * I hope to give a more minute analysis of it in my own church.
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT FEE-MILLENNIAL. 465 
 
 whom lie may devour;" and I have been surprised at 
 the inconsistency of those who admit the personality of 
 the Spirit of God, yet deny the personality of Satan ; for 
 the construction of the language that describes Satan as 
 only figurative, must necessarily lead to the interpreta- 
 tion of the language that describes the Spirit of God as 
 figurative also. Hence it generally happens that those 
 who maintain that Satan is but a figure of speech, are 
 specimens of the victims of Satan as a triumphant 
 seducer, for they are led to deny, and consistently so, 
 the personality of the Holy Spirit, as the third Person of 
 the glorious Trinity. 
 
 We next read that in the Millennium there are 
 thrones of glory and of beauty, and that on these 
 thrones of glory and of beauty Christ's saints sit and 
 reign with him a thousand years ; and among those 
 who occupy the loftiest places of these thrones, are 
 those " that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and 
 for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the 
 beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark 
 upon their foreheads, or in their hands." These are de- 
 scribed in the sixth chapter of this book, wherein the 
 saints that were martyred for the testimony of Jesus, are 
 represented as crying out from beneath the throne, "How 
 long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and 
 avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? And 
 white robes were given unto every one of them ; and it 
 was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little 
 season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, 
 that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." 
 The description of their joy in the 20th chapter is the 
 response to that prayer : their resurrection to rise and 
 reign with Christ for a thousand years, in glory and joy, 
 and light and peace. 
 
 Now here contest or dispute begins. It is here that 
 conflicting views come into play. First, Is the Saviour's 
 advent to precede the Millennium during which he reigns 
 in person, or is his advent to succeed it ? Secondly, Is 
 this resurrection of the just, so frequently alluded to in 
 Scripture, separate from the general resurrection pro- 
 claimed to take place at the close of the millennial king- 
 2 n
 
 466 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 dorn ? In expressing my conviction, I ask you not to 
 take my opinions as if they were undisputed ; weigh 
 well and impartially what I say ; I enunciate conclusions 
 to which I think fair criticism leads me, and will, I hope, 
 lead you too ; viz. that Christ will personally come prior 
 to the Millennium, and that the first resurrection precedes 
 and does not succeed that epoch. 
 
 These views, of course, must not be taken on the 
 strength of the opinions or acceptance of men, they 
 must be received or rejected upon the authority of the 
 word of God ; and this evening, therefore, I Avill sub- 
 mit to you, first, the various opinions entertained upon 
 the subject ; next, the grounds on which I come to the 
 conclusion I have now expressed. One circumstance, 
 however, must strike us at the beginning of our inquiry. 
 We are constantly told in Scripture that " we know not 
 when Christ comes," and " the day and the hour no man 
 knows," and we are told to be constantly watching and 
 looking for him : now if it be true that a thousand years 
 of millennial peace are to precede Christ's advent, it is 
 plain we shall be able to specify, during any part of the 
 Millennium, the very day, almost the very hour, when 
 Christ will come ; they, I submit with all respect, are 
 the rash fixers of dates who say Christ's advent is post- 
 millennial : they leave it as God's word has left it, in 
 sublime and significant uncertainty, who bid you look 
 for Christ in the clouds at any moment, and anticipate 
 the Millennium as the bright sunshine that follows, not 
 precedes, that risen Sun. 
 
 The first opinion which I will quote, respecting what is 
 called the resurrection of the just, and the nature of the 
 millennial reign, was held by Tatian, Justin Martyr, Ig- 
 natius, and Tertullian, four of the earliest writers in the 
 history of the Christian Church, one of whom has expressed 
 the most beautiful, scriptural, and evangelical sentiments. 
 The opinion of these ancient writers is as follows : 
 First, that at the advent of Christ, Antichrist shall 
 finally be destroyed ; next, that there is to be a binding of 
 Satan and a repression of all the powers of hell for a 
 thousand literal years ; that the government of the earth 
 is to be in the hands of Christj and that his saints shall
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT PKE-MILLENNIAL. 467 
 
 be co-equal, or like to the angels ; that all false religion 
 shall be rooted out ; the Jews converted, and restored to 
 their own land, and Jerusalem again become the sacred 
 metropolis of all the nations of the earth ; and, at the 
 end of the Millennium, these ancient writers believe, that 
 Satan will be let loose once more, and that the enemies 
 of God, some where on the out-skirts of the earth, repre- 
 sented by the names Gog and Magog, shall make war 
 against the people of God ; that these his enemies shall 
 be totally and finally destroyed ; and then shall be the 
 resurrection of all that are in their graves the casting 
 of Satan into the lake of fire and the full and unsus- 
 pended reign of everlasting life and gloiy and felicity in 
 heaven. 
 
 The second theory is the theory held by a Father 
 no less eminent than any I have mentioned, namely, 
 Augustine. Augustine believes that the resurrection 
 here spoken of is purely spiritual ; that the commence- 
 ment of it was when Christ came into the world to 
 suffer, and that a resurrection takes place ever as a soul 
 is converted and raised from the death of sin to the life 
 of righteousness. 
 
 The third solution is that held by Grotius and Ham- 
 mond, and some other divines subsequent to the Reform- 
 ation. Their idea is, that the first resurrection was 
 purely ecclesiastical, and that it began in the days of 
 Constantine, when the Church of Christ was established 
 by law -, that the Apocalyptic beast was not Papal Rome, 
 but Pagan Rome a series of assumptions utterly and 
 altogether untenable. 
 
 The last view is that espoused by Whitby, and held by 
 many other eminent modern commentators ; it is this : 
 that the first resurrection is not a resurrection of the 
 bodies, but of the principles and doctrines, and spiritual 
 character and life of the Christian martyrs ; that the 
 first resurrection is to be partly spiritual, partly national, 
 partly ecclesiastical ; that the Pope is to be destroyed, 
 the Jews converted and restored to their own land, and 
 the splendour of the Millennium, at the close of which 
 Christ will come, is to merge in the heavenly glory, 
 and both be one. These are the four solutions of 
 2 H 2
 
 468 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 this chapter that have been offered by eminent ex- 
 positors. 
 
 It is obvious that the first and last are the only two 
 worthy of discussion. The two intermediate theories, 
 the second by Augustine and the third by Grotius, seem 
 utterly untenable. They are contrary to the plainest 
 principles we have established before, and as obviously 
 inconsistent with fair Biblical interpretation, and I do 
 not think it worth while to discuss them. The first 
 theory, therefore, that held by Justin Martyr, Ignatius, 
 and Tertullian, on the one hand, and the last theory, or 
 that adopted by Whitby, and held by many Christians at 
 present, are the only two worthy of patient and impartial 
 examination. 
 
 There are difficulties connected with both this is too 
 plain. What subject has no difficulty ? It is the law 
 of God that, in this dispensation, there shall be no 
 truth that projects not a shadow around it : the leaves 
 of the tree of knowledge are not to be altogether 
 luminous in this dispensation ; in the better world 
 those leaves will all be luminous truth will have no 
 shadow the Sun of Righteousness will be naked we 
 shall meet with no difficulty all will be so plain, that 
 he that runs may read and understand. But while the 
 first theory has difficulties, the second seems to have in- 
 superable ones. 
 
 I proceed to give a few of those reasons which induce 
 me to believe that the second, namely, Whitby's, is un- 
 tenable. His argument is this : the resurrection of the 
 martyrs, declared in the twentieth chapter, means the 
 resurrection of their principles, their spirit, and their 
 life, and he quotes Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones, as a 
 case parallel, and illustrative of it. The Jews are nation- 
 ally dead, and they are represented by bones exceeding 
 many and exceeding dry the breath of heaven passes 
 over them the bones are clothed with sinews, and the 
 Jews experience a resurrection from the dead. This is 
 a symbol ; so is the millennial resurrection. " So," says 
 Whitby, "it will be with the first resurrection of the 
 martyrs and those that have not the mark of the beast." 
 He also gives another instance that of the prodigal
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT PRE-MILLENNIAL. 469 
 
 son. The prodigal was dead, that is, spiritually ; when 
 he was restored to his father, he is pronounced to be 
 alive, i. e. to be risen from the dead ; and in the light of 
 these two instances, he views the resurrection of the 
 martyrs and saints described in this chapter. He has 
 confounded things that differ. What looks like illus- 
 tration is really not so. When we read of those re- 
 surrections to which he has referred, we likewise read 
 of deaths corresponding to them ; in other words, we 
 judge of the nature of the resurrection by the nature 
 and requirements of the death. Thus, the death of 
 the Jews is shown in the imagery of Ezekiel to have 
 been national their resurrection, therefore, must be 
 necessarily national too. The death of the prodigal was 
 spiritual the resurrection of the prodigal was necessa- 
 rily spiritual too. But the death of the martyrs in 
 Revelation (chap, xx.) is pronounced to be individual, 
 literal; they were " beheaded for the testimony of Jesus ;" 
 they were declared in the previous chapter to be indi- 
 vidually slain as witnesses for and to the truth of Jesus ; 
 and therefore, instead of Whitby's conclusion necessarily 
 following, it seems to me, that ours, or the very reverse, 
 is the result of his reasoning, viz. that as national death, 
 in the case of the Jews, implied that their resurrection 
 would be national as a spiritual death, in the case of 
 the prodigal, implied that his resurrection would be spi- 
 ritual so the literal death, in the case of the martyrs of 
 Jesus, implies that their resurrection must be literal and 
 personal too. 
 
 But there is yet another difficulty in the way of our 
 accepting his interpretation. He says this resurrection 
 means the resurrection of the spirit, that is, fearlessness 
 of death fixed constancy and victory over persecution 
 of the martyrs. This seems unnatural, if we suppose, 
 as he does, the previous existence of a Millennium of per- 
 fect happiness and unsuspended peace. How shall there 
 be martyrs during the Millennium, when there will be no 
 murderers? How shall any one manifest the spirit of 
 a martyr when there can be none to manifest the spirit 
 or conduct of murderers ? How shall any suffer pain 
 when there is no one to inflict it ? We are forced to con-
 
 470 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES 
 
 elude that the resurrection of the martyrs signifies, not 
 that persons will be raised up who should have the spirit 
 but not die the death of the martyrs, but that it implies 
 the literal resurrection from the dead of those among 
 others that died and sealed their testimony with their 
 own blood. But an objection to this interpretation of 
 ours is deduced from the words, " I saw the souls 'of 
 them that were beheaded ;" from which it is argued that, 
 as souls are spoken of, it cannot mean persons; but every 
 reader of the Bible cannot but know that the " soul" is 
 frequently used to describe the whole man " Soul, take 
 thine ease," is an instance of this and, in the 6th chap- 
 ter of this book, it is said, " the souls of those that were 
 beneath the altar cried, How long ? " 
 
 I therefore conclude that the first resurrection is the 
 literal resurrection of the just or saints, and of them 
 alone, to reign personally with Christ throughout the 
 thousand years that follow. That Christ's advent, at 
 which this resurrection is to take place, is to be pre- 
 millennial, I think is evident from Matthew xiii. alone, 
 where we read as follows, at ver. 24, " Another parable 
 put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven 
 is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his 
 field : but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed 
 tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when 
 the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then 
 appeared the tares also. The servants of the householder 
 came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good 
 seed in thy field ? from whence then hath it tares ? He 
 said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants 
 said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather 
 them up ? But he said, Nay, lest while ye gather up the 
 tares ye root up the wheat also : let both grow together 
 until the harvest : and in the time of harvest I will say 
 to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and 
 bind them in bundles to burn them," the desolation of 
 Antichrist and all his followers, " but gather the wheat 
 into my barn." Now I infer from this, that the wheat, 
 or true believers, and the tares, or apostate and unright- 
 eous, will grow together until the end of this dispensa- 
 tion come ; the tares are to be first consumed, as I showed
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT PRE-MILLENXIAL. 471 
 
 you in a previous lecture, the wheat is then gathered 
 into happiness i. e. the saints are raised from the dead, 
 and reign with Christ a thousand years. 
 
 The next evidence of this I will give you is from 2 
 Thess. ii. 4, where we have tlie description of the man of 
 sin, " who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that 
 is called God, or that is worshipped ; so that he, as God, 
 sitteth in the temple of God, showing that he is God. 
 Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told 
 you these things ? And now ye know what withholdeth 
 that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery 
 of iniquity doth already work : only he who now letteth 
 will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then 
 shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall con- 
 sume with the Spirit of his mouth," the wasting of 
 Rome first, " and destroy with the brightness of his 
 (Trapouo-m) personal appearance." What does this pas- 
 sage prove ? That the great Apostacy, predicted by St. 
 Paul, is to prevail during the whole period from Christ's 
 first to his second advent, and that this hoary Apostacy 
 is ^to be consumed and utterly destroyed only by the 
 personal advent and appearance of the Son of God. At 
 that very period, the Apostle speaks of " a gathering 
 together unto Him," which he calls by the expression, 
 (tTTKTvi'aywyjj,) " a collection together unto " Christ of the 
 risen saints, when he comes to consume and destroy the 
 great Papal Apostacy by the brightness of his coming. 
 
 Then, in Luke xiv. 14, our Lord speaks of "the re- 
 surrection of the just," as if that resurrection were totally 
 distinct from the general resurrection, and to take place 
 at Christ's pre-millennial appearance. Then, in Matt, 
 xix., " Verily I say unto you, that ye which have fol- 
 lowed me in the regeneration, when the Son of man 
 shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon 
 twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." We 
 read in the Acts of the Apostles of Christ remaining in 
 heaven " till the restitution of all things," or " till he 
 restore all things : " we read in Rom. viii. " that all 
 creation is groaning and travailing in pain, waiting for 
 the manifestation of the sons of God." And respecting 
 this manifestation of the sons of God, we read its defi-
 
 472 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 nition, " waiting for the adoption, that is, the resurrec- 
 tion of the body." And you recollect the Apostle says, 
 in Phil, iii., " if by any means I might attain unto the 
 resurrection of the dead." On this last passage I may 
 observe, there is no doubt all will be raised at the last, or 
 attain a resurrection : in this sense, no man need wish 
 to attain the resurrection of the dead,. because it is mat- 
 ter of certainty that all will attain it: the Apostle, 
 therefore, evidently had before his eyes the first resur- 
 rection, and the peculiar phraseology he employs on this 
 occasion proves it to be so " if by any means I might 
 attain (rr\v i^nvaffraatv -wv re/v-pwv) the resurrection 
 from among the dead;" just that resurrection of which 
 it is said, " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the 
 first resurrection." * 
 
 I might quote more texts, but it would probably weary 
 you, and besides time will not permit me to do so ; I 
 must state, briefly, the conclusion I have come to. 
 
 I believe, from these and other reasons, that very 
 soon Christ will come upon the clouds of heaven, and 
 that, when he comes, the dead in Christ shall hear the 
 sound of the trumpet and shall rise and meet him in the air, 
 and that they shall reign with him whatever may be the 
 special nature of that reign and its details a thousand 
 years, and after that shall be the general resurrection of 
 the dead, when the rest shall rise and be judged, "ac- 
 cording to the deeds done in the body." 
 
 On no other view can I explain the language of 
 Scripture. " As it was in the days of Noah, so shall 
 also the coming of the Son of man be. For, as in the 
 days that were before the flood, they were eating and 
 drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day 
 that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the 
 flood came and took them all away ; so shall also the 
 coming of the Son of man be." How truly in keeping 
 with this is our Lord's own statement, " Behold, I come 
 as a thief ! " Hear also what St. Peter says, in 2 Pet. iii. 
 3, 4. " Knowing this first, that there shall come in the 
 last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and 
 
 * Scholz's reading is still more marked, T;I/ tgavdcr-raffLv TTJV IK 
 viKpiuv, the resurrection, the one from among the dead.
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT FEE-MILLENNIAL. 473 
 
 saying, Where is the promise of his coming ? for since 
 the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were 
 from the beginning of the creation. For this they 
 willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the 
 heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the 
 water and in the water : whereby the world that then 
 was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the 
 heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word 
 are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of 
 judgment and perdition of ungodly men." On which 
 verse I may note, that the expression "reserved unto 
 fire," is literally translated " stored with " or " having a 
 treasure " of fire ; and this criticism leads me to remind 
 you of what I told you last Sunday evening, that the 
 discovery of modern geologists is, that this earth was 
 once liquid, like liquid lava, that it is only cooled down 
 upon its outer crust, and that the interior of the globe is 
 still an ocean of liquid or molten fire the earthquakes we' 
 feel, the concussions of its rolling waves the volcanoes, 
 the safety-valves for its escape ; and so the last discovery 
 of science casts its light upon the statement of Scripture, 
 and gives, in this instance, but the earnest of that day 
 when all science and all literature shall combine to testify 
 " God's word is true." " But the day of the Lord will 
 come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall 
 pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
 melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that 
 are therein shall be burned up." And when Christ 
 comes, how startling shall be the hour of the advent ! 
 The dead that fell asleep in Jesus, and have slept many 
 thousand years, shall hear, when he comes, the approach 
 of his footfall, and recognise the sound of his voice, and 
 shall rise and meet him in the air. The living that 
 are in Christ shall hear his approach, too, and recognise 
 the tones of his voice, and shall rise and meet him and 
 the risen and quickened dead in the air, and reign with 
 him a thousand years. Abraham, and Noah, and Job 
 shall hear his voice in their silent sepulchres, and join 
 him in the air. Paul, and Peter, and John, and Luther, 
 and Wilberforce, and Simeon of Cambridge, and Venn, 
 and Williams, and Chalmers, shall obey his summons
 
 474 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 from their sequestered and separate tombs, and gather 
 around their glorious Lord. One grave shall cleave in 
 twain, and its buried tenantry shall rise and meet the 
 Lord, and the other grave, that looks equally green, 
 beside it shall fail to be pierced by that sound, or its 
 dead dust to be moved. The cemeteries of stone and the 
 monuments of bronze shall rend, and the dead saints that 
 are there shall come forth its sleeping dust shall be 
 quickened in every sepulchre ; and the stones of cathe- 
 drals, and the vaults of churches, and the green turf, and 
 the marble mausoleum shall alike explode, and pour 
 forth into the air their troops of awakened dead. Nor 
 less startling will be the scenes that occur among ]he 
 living ; some families shall be met together speaking of 
 the things of this world in an instant, and without 
 warning, one shall hear a sound significant to his heart 
 of glory, and rise as upon the lightning's wing, and with 
 its splendour, and leave without a farewell the rest that 
 know not Christ, and remain astonished behind. Oh ! 
 great day of separation of families of dislocation of 
 households of severance of the dead of removal of the 
 living of astonishment to the world of glory to the 
 Lord Jesus of happiness to the saints ! But, you ask, 
 what shall become of those that are left behind ? The 
 earth, having given up the silent dust of the saints that 
 sleep beneath it and every living saint that lives upon 
 the earth having heard his voice, and responded to its 
 call then the fire that is treasured up, as I explained to 
 you, in the very centre of the earth, shall burst forth at 
 ten thousand crevices " the elements shall melt as with 
 fervent heat" the solid rocks shall blaze as if they were 
 wax, and the rivers as if they were oil, and the weary old 
 earth, having undergone the ordeal of the last fire, shall 
 regain its pristine purity, and become fit for the immedi- 
 ate presence of the descending Saviour and his risen saints. 
 The earth shall be made new its soil restored paradise 
 regained. The deep-toned miserere of humanity that 
 has risen for six thousand years, shall be lost in the ever- 
 lasting jubilee. There will be no tears no sighs no 
 crying no storms shall disturb its calm there will be 
 "no decay in its verdure no serpent's trail amid its
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT PKE-MILLENNIAL. 475 
 
 flowers but happiness and love, and joy and peace, for 
 a thousand years in the presence of Christ and his saints. 
 
 Some say, will not this be an earthly heaven ? My 
 dear friends, earth is not essentially corrupt : there is 
 nothing sinful in the clods of the valley or inherently 
 polluted in a rose, or in a tree, or in a stone. I have 
 seen spots upon the earth so beautiful, that if no clouds 
 of winter would overtake them, nor the sin of man 
 blast them, I could wish to live amidst them for ever. 
 Take sin from the earth the fever that incessantly dis- 
 turbs it the cold freezing shadow that creeps over it 
 let my Lord and my Saviour plant his throne upon the 
 earth, and his hand wave its consecration, and make it 
 the presence of Christ, and where can there exist a 
 lovelier spot ? what fairer land can man desire to 
 live on ? would it not be joy unspeakable and full of 
 glory ? To me it is heaven where Christ is, whether he 
 be throned upon earth, or reigning amid the splendours 
 of the sky if I am with him, and he with me, I must 
 enjoy unsullied and perpetual happiness. 
 
 I have thus, then, given you, not an elaborate expo- 
 sition of the twentieth chapter, but a short, and, as I con- 
 ceive to be, a fair and honest outline of its predicted 
 events. It does not become me to attempt to play the 
 prophet. We are only fallible expositors of the word of 
 God. I may have formed wrong conceptions of its sym- 
 bols. I may, perhaps, have rashly intruded where angels 
 fear to tread. I do not ask you to take my opinion be- 
 cause it seems to be plausible, but to study that blessed 
 book, on the very threshold and vestibule of which are 
 written the inspired and inviting words, " Blessed is he 
 that readeth and understandeth the things that are writ- 
 ten in this book." If it be true that the Jews are soon 
 to be restored within, as I think, a very few years ; if 
 it be true, as I have likewise indicated, that twenty years 
 more will introduce some of the last startling phenomena 
 to which I have alluded for it is remarkable that most 
 prophetic interpreters take the nearest time of the first 
 resurrection to be A. D. 1864, and the remotest time to be 
 A. D. 1885 : take the nearest or the remotest, I conclude 
 that, between those bounding periods, the dead saints
 
 476 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 who are in their graves shall hear the peal of the resur- 
 rection trumpet, and the living saints that are on earth 
 shall hear it too, and their hearts shall leap for joy ; and 
 the dead in Christ, and they that are alive in Christ, 
 shall meet the Lord in the air, and reign with him a 
 thousand years. Great and solemn crisis, I cannot but 
 again exclaim ! One in a family shall be taken, and the 
 other shall be left the mother will be snatched up to 
 the Lord, her son will be left to perish in the flames ! 
 The husband will be left, and the wife will be taken. My 
 dear friends, our separations now are but dim shadows of 
 that last terrible one. Oh ! fathers, mothers, sisters, 
 brothers, in this assembly, if you desire your circles upon 
 earth to be happy, how should you pray that you may 
 be happy together throughout eternity ! Mothers, if you 
 wish to meet your babes in glory, teach them to love 
 their Saviour now. Sons and daughters ! if you wish 
 to see the gray hairs of your parents amidst the throng 
 that surrounds the Lord Jesus, pray for them now. Sun- 
 day-school teachers, if you would take those children to 
 heaven with you, and have them for the jewels in your 
 diadem, teach them to love and know their Saviour now. 
 Masters, you are responsible for your servants servants, 
 for your masters children, for your parents parents, 
 for your children each, for his neighbour. Let each 
 pray and strive, and spend and be spent, that each may 
 meet the other where there shall be no separation no 
 pain no sorrow but all shall be one for ever with the 
 Lord. 
 
 I ask you again, each individually, as before God, are 
 you a Christian ? My dear friends, here is your unhappy 
 misapprehension. When I bid you be religious, you 
 fancy I am urging you to take some nauseous and un- 
 palatable drug, necessary in order that you may be saved, 
 but which you would rather postpone to the very last 
 moment. In beseeching you to be Christians, I bid you 
 be happy ; in inviting you to come to Christ, I invite 
 you to be a partaker of a joy and peace which you have 
 never tasted before. In bidding you be holy, I bid you 
 cease to be miserable, and learn what it is to be instantly 
 and unspeakably happy. I ask you, are you the children
 
 CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT FEE-MILLENNIAL. 477 
 
 of God ? Are you Christians indeed ? Do not leave the 
 question unsettled. It can be settled. You need not leave 
 it in uncertainty. The man whose heart is changed, and 
 he alone, has settled it. The man whose trust is on the 
 Rock of ages knows that he is so. Examine yourselves. 
 Judge ye. I speak as unto reasonable men. " If any 
 man be in Christ he is a new creature : old things are 
 passed away, behold, all things are become new." " If 
 any man believeth not on him, the wrath of God abideth 
 on him." O God, grant that at that day, and that hour, 
 which I have attempted thus darkly to describe, we may 
 be found having our lamps burning and our loins girt, 
 and ready to obey the Saviour's voice, and to rise and 
 reign with Him in glory. He cometh with clouds, and 
 every eye shall see Him. 
 
 " The Lord shall come, the earth shall quake, 
 The mountains to their centre shake, 
 And, withering from the vault of night, 
 The stars shall pale their feeble light. 
 Can this be He, who, wont to stray 
 A pilgrim on the world's highway, 
 Oppress'd by power, and mock'd by pride, 
 The Nazarene ! The Crucified ? 
 While sinners in despair shall call, 
 Rocks, hide us mountains, on us fall; 
 The saints, ascending from the tomb, 
 Shall joyful sing, The Lord is come."
 
 LECTURE XXV. 
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 
 
 " Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and 
 keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his 
 shame." REV. xvi. 15. 
 
 I THINK I have proved there can be no Millennium 
 upon earth until there burst upon it first a revelation of 
 the light of the Sun of Righteousness. I showed, I think, 
 by texts that are conclusive, that the Millennium is to 
 succeed, not to precede, the Redeemer's second personal 
 coming, and thus to be the reflection of the shining 
 light of the manifested Sun of Righteousness. I adduced 
 the parable which describes the present dispensation of 
 the Church as being a mixture of the tares and the 
 wheat together, and showed that this condition of the 
 visible Church is to remain till the great harvest-man 
 shall come to sever the tares from the wheat ; to pre- 
 serve the one, and to cast away and everlastingly 
 consume the other. I proved that the advent of Christ, 
 from the chronological views which we have endea- 
 voured to establish in expounding the Apocalypse, must 
 be very near ; and I showed you the nature of that ad- 
 vent : He will come, like the lightning, unexpected on a 
 world that looks not for him : " As it was in the days of 
 Noah, so shall it be also in the day when the Son of man 
 cometh. They were eating and drinking, marrying and 
 giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into 
 the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took 
 them all away." And again, it is written, " When the 
 Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth ?"
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 479 
 
 And again, "I come as a thief;" denoting the unex- 
 pected and sudden nature of his advent. Now, putting 
 a fair construction upon these passages, I cannot come 
 to the conclusion that there will be first a thousand years 
 of millennial peace, and that at the close of this Millen- 
 nium, Christ shall come and sit upon his throne and 
 judge the world. On the contrary, I am driven to the 
 conclusion, which I have endeavoured already to express, 
 that the second advent of Christ is the great hope of the 
 Christian Church for the future, and as the blessings of 
 the gospel flow from faith in a personal Christ, so all 
 the splendours of the millennium day shall be reflected 
 from a present personal Christ. 
 
 I think I see throughout Scripture clearly enunciated 
 two resurrections. These two are stated in the 20th 
 chapter of this book, and that the literal meaning is the 
 true I think will appear, if you notice a peculiarity in 
 the language of the Apocalypse, which I omitted to re- 
 fer to, viz. that invariably after St. John has stated 
 some great symbol, he introduces a parenthetic explanar 
 tion of it, which is of necessity literal. Thus, when he 
 sees seven candlesticks, he appends the explanation of 
 it ; the seven candlesticks, i. e. the symbols, are seven 
 churches. The statement, they " are seven churches," 
 is a literal explanation of the symbol, " seven candle- 
 sticks ;" so here, when he states that those that had not 
 the mark of the beast shall rise and reign with Christ a 
 thousand years, he adds the explanatory remark, exactly 
 parallel with those cases I have quoted, " This is the 
 first resurrection." This last expression is not a symbol 
 to be further explained by some literal fulfilment, but it 
 is an historical or explanatory statement of a symbol 
 which literally describes the literal fact. But this dis- 
 tinction in the resurrection of the dead is not at all pe- 
 culiar to the Apocalypse. I find the Apostle Paul, as I 
 have stated, saying, " If by any means I might attain 
 unto the resurrection of the dead." Now, on looking at 
 the English translation, we do not precisely understand 
 the hope of the Apostle ; for all will attain the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead ; the just and the unjust must rise from
 
 489 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the dead. Then how could this resurrection be an 
 object of glorious hope to the Apostle, as distinct and 
 separate from the hope of the rest of the world ? Every 
 scholar, or rather every one that understands the rudi- 
 ments of the Greek tongue, has only to open his New 
 Testament, and he will find the Apostle's language is 
 peculiar and distinct. His words are not rfjv avaaTaaiv 
 rijjv vtKp&v, but rf]v k^avaaraaiv EK T&V j'ecpwv ; which 
 means literally, " if by any means I may attain to the 
 resurrection," not rStv vtKp&v, " of the dead," but that 
 marked, peculiar, and well-known " resurrection, that 
 great one, " from among the dead." It is the most ex- 
 pressive combination of words to describe the first resur- 
 rection ; and shows that the Apostle understood that 
 there was a resurrection peculiar to the people of God, 
 and distinct from the resurrection of the unjust. Our 
 Lord also speaks of this first resurrection, in language 
 that plainly implies its distinction from the last or 
 secojid. In Luke xx. 35, the very same expression, 
 7v)e avaoTcurewg rfjg IK rCjv vtKputv, "that resurrection, that 
 one from among, or of the number of, the dead." Thus 
 it seems to me that John refers to this resurrection as 
 one well known and universally admitted, as if he said 
 " this hope which Paul cherished in his trials this 
 which is the subject of the Saviour's promise this 
 which is the hope and ardent expectation of his saints 
 this is not a strange, a figurative, or symbolic hope, but 
 ft substantial and a real one" "this is that resurrection, 
 that great one, from among the dead." 
 
 I have showed you what will take place at that resur- 
 rection, when Christ shall come, " who is the resurrection 
 and the life." The moment that the cloud shall waft him 
 on its wings from the throne on which he now sits, and 
 bring him within the range and the attraction of the orb 
 on which we now stand that instant every grave that 
 has a saint beneath it, though the ocean's pressure or 
 the Alpine hills and avalanches be upon it, shall split 
 asunder, and its awakened dead shall come forth ; and 
 every grave that contains the dust of an unrenewed and 
 unconverted man let it be covered with a beautiful
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 481 
 
 tablet, or inscribed with holy epitaph let it be a cathe- 
 dral vault, or marble mausoleum be it what it may, 
 the summons will be unheard, and the dead dust that is 
 there will lie as still and as quiet as the dead in the 
 churchyard, were you or I to say to them, " Come forth." 
 You will see emerge from one grave a cloud of saints 
 that have heard the sound of their Saviour's voice in its 
 inmost caverns, and rise to reign with Christ a thousand 
 years, and you will see the graves of the dead who are 
 not in Christ remain still and motionless as if the wind 
 only swept over them. But the living, what is to be 
 their case ? " The dead in Christ shall rise first," says 
 the Apostle ; "then we which are alive and remain, shall 
 be caught up to meet the Lord in the air." What a 
 sublime spectacle that will be ! What awful and start- 
 ling severances ! I look into that home ; one rises as he 
 hears a mysterious bidding, and ascends under a mys- 
 terious attraction, and meets the Lord in the air : the 
 mother is taken, the daughter is left or two rise, and 
 the rest remain. Suppose that the hour that is rushing 
 by were this evening the close of this dispensation sup- 
 pose that dread sound were to reverberate through 
 Exeter Hall, what would follow? Men and brethren, 
 what spectacle shall we anticipate ? where and what shall 
 we be ? Shall I say a thousand or two thousand will rise 
 as on eagles' wings, and unmoved thousands remain be- 
 hind ? God knows. Now be at peace with God. Now 
 lay down the weapons of rebellion if one soul shall be 
 found that day unwakened, in his stirring home or in 
 his silent grave, by that royal sound, that soul will have 
 for his portion the worm that never dies, and the fire that 
 is never quenched ; and feel he will for ever what he 
 will utter in his endless agony, " I did it all myself: I 
 neglected the gospel, and perished in my sins ; I loved 
 the world more than I loved my Lord, and all this ill is 
 the result of my own doing, and of nothing else." 
 
 Such, then, shall be the awful severance that will take 
 place when Christ shall come. They that sleep in Christ 
 shall rise, and only they, and they that are alive and live 
 in Christ, and only they shall join them ; and the dead 
 whose souls are not united to the Saviour, resting in their 
 2 i
 
 482 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 graves, shall remain ; the living, whose hearts are not 
 renewed by the Holy Ghost, and Avith the Saviour, 
 shall remain also. The instant that this earth has been 
 thus consigned to be the habitation of the dead in soul 
 and the dead in body, the fire, which I told you geolo- 
 gists have admitted, and which the Scripture confirms, 
 to be a large ocean of restless and of liquid lava, that 
 rolls and heaves in the innermost recesses of the earth, 
 of which our volcanoes are but the safety-valves, and our 
 earthquakes as the reverberations of its ceaseless waves 
 lashing its desolate and dreary shores, shall burst forth 
 at a thousand orifices ; the gasses that compose our 
 atmosphere shall ignite, and "the heaven and the earth," 
 meaning this visible economy around us, " shall melt," 
 in the language of the Apostle, "as if with fervent 
 heat:" Christ's people in the air the people that are 
 not Christ's on the earth the living punished on it, the 
 dead buried beneath it. 
 
 Such is the solemn finale ; and, when this has taken 
 place, this purified earth shall be the residence of the 
 saints of God. Indeed, the impression has struck me 
 that the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of the 
 Apocalypse, on which I cannot enter in this Hall, but 
 some of the points of which I shall have occasion to al- 
 lude to in a second series, it strikes me that those two 
 chapters contain a description, not of the Church in ever- 
 lasting glory, but of the Church upon this very world : 
 I do not advocate a carnal or a sensuous heaven : a holy 
 and happy earth is not carnal. There is nothing sinful 
 in a stone. There is nothing naturally tainted and im- 
 pure in the grass that grows, or in the trees that bloom, 
 or in the waters in the ocean, or in the streams, or in the 
 rivers that flow towards the boundless main. It may be 
 restored and purified by fire, consecrated by the descend- 
 ing footsteps of our descended God the earth may be 
 made the vestibule of glory, the twilight of a day in 
 whose splendours we shall live and glow for ever. 
 
 After this resurrection has taken place, the Millennium 
 will begin ; for a thousand years Satan will be chained, 
 all the powers the Satanic powers that have tempted 
 mankind, will be repressed during the lapse of a thousand
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 483 
 
 years, and the earth shall be the holy platform, the con- 
 secrated temple the altar-ground on which congregated 
 saints in their resurrection bodies, free from all sin, 
 shall worship and adore the Lord. Every flower that 
 decks the earth shall reflect the splendour and send up 
 as incense the fragrance of the Sun of Righteousness ; 
 every sound in creation the chime of waves the breath 
 of winds the hum of bees the song of birds the 
 lowing of cattle shall lose the minor sound that noAv 
 runs through them all, and with Christ for their key-note 
 shall be woven into the harmony of a happy universe : 
 every mind shall be light, every heart love, and every 
 tongue shall be praise. 
 
 Such is the Millennium as it is described in Scrip- 
 ture ; but one difficult point remains ; it may be my 
 own delusion, but it does strike me that I have found 
 the explanation of a universally perplexing point a 
 confessed difficulty : if there is to be a Millennium of a 
 thousand years with Christ and his own people, in the 
 midst of the earth, how is it that when Satan shall be 
 loosed, that there shall be found a people in the four 
 corners of the earth called Gog and Magog, who shall 
 be gathered together in battle, and war against the saints 
 of God in the resurrection body ? Now, I admit there is 
 great difficulty about this ; but observe, the difficulty 
 that occurs to the mind and theory of a pre-millennialist 
 is not greater than the difficulty that occurs to the theory 
 and exposition of a post-millennialist. I will give what 
 I think the probable solution of an admitted and per- 
 plexing difficulty. Do you perceive that it is here stated 
 that when the dead in Christ have risen and ascended 
 to the Lord, the rest of the dead lived not till the thou- 
 sand years were finished ? I suppose, then, that " the 
 rest of the dead," that is, the unconverted, are raised 
 from their graves just at the moment that the thousand 
 years are completely closed, and that " the rest of the 
 dead" raised in their bodies, are those enemies who 
 make war with the saints in their resurrection bodies ; 
 the unjust shall arise as well as the just ; the one shall 
 have their bodies restored as well as the other, the im- 
 primatur of eternity stamped upon the one, the impri- 
 2 i 2
 
 484 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 matur of eternity stamped upon the other the one an 
 eternal capacity of woe, the other of bliss. I suppose 
 and I believe it is the true solution of the difficulty 
 that the enemies that come from the four corners of the 
 earth, are just " the rest of the dead," raised at the close 
 of the Millennium, and then and there, with all their 
 vices unextirpated, their natures unregenerated, their 
 hearts in the gall of bitterness, they shall be headed by 
 the archangel's energy, and the archfiend's hate, and shall 
 make one last, dying, and desperate attack upon the 
 saints of God that dwell in the new Jerusalem, and who 
 there magnify and worship the Lamb. Now the cause 
 of the difficulty has generally been, that at the eleventh 
 verse of chap. xx. it is stated, " I saw a great white 
 throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth 
 and the heaven fled away ; and there was found no place 
 for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
 before God ; and the books were opened : and another 
 book was opened, which is the book of life : and the 
 dead were judged out of those things that were written 
 in the books, according to their works." I think this 
 will confirm my exposition : it is not said, when the 
 statement is given about the great white throne, that the 
 rest of the dead then rose : it is remarkable that in the 
 commencement of the chapter it is said, " the rest of the 
 dead lived not till the thousand years were finished ;" 
 and when the great white throne is set, it is not said that 
 the rest of the dead were summoned from their graves, 
 but it presupposes that they had already arisen, and per- 
 haps implies an interval, during which interval they 
 make their last attack ; it is stated that all had risen at 
 the end of the thousand years, and they stood before the 
 great white throne, to receive judgment according to the 
 deeds done in the body ; " and as many of them as were 
 not found written in the Lamb's book of life were cast 
 into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." 
 
 It is thus, then, that I attempt the solution of a diffi- 
 culty so perplexing. I only ask you to study it : if you 
 see reasons for rejecting this view, do so ; if you see the 
 confirmation of it, you should be thankful that you find 
 the solution of a difficulty that has perplexed almost
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 485 
 
 every commentator on the Apocalypse, and which I sub- 
 mit as a thought that has occurred to my own mind, as 
 probably the true and just solution of a great and ac- 
 knowledged difficulty. 
 
 Now having gone thus far in stating the nature of the 
 Millennium, I know that many questions will be asked, 
 such as have been asked before, to which no answers are 
 given in Scripture, and to which I profess to be able 
 and willing to give none. If it be asked : What shall be 
 the nature of the personal manifestation of the Lord of 
 glory ? Shall we see the traces of the nails in his hands ? 
 Shall we see the mark of the crown of thorns about his 
 brow ? Where will he be throned ? In what portion of 
 the earth will he be seen ? How will he talk or walk in 
 the midst of us ? To such questions Scripture has given 
 no answer ; and where God's word is silent, it is not for 
 me to speak. Again, the question will be asked, What 
 will be the nature of the resurrection body of the saints ? 
 What will be its employments, its physical characteris- 
 tics? To these and a thousand kindred questions, the 
 Bible gives no reply, and I attempt to give none. I look 
 for no sensuous Millennium no Pagan Elysium. On 
 the contrary, I would not have a Millennium without 
 Christ, but rather Christ without a Millennium. The 
 believer's safety is in Christ, the believer's heaven is in 
 Christ, and wherever Christ is, in the firmament above, 
 or in the earth below, it matters not, there I desire to 
 be, and there perfect happiness will be. But I believe 
 this high happiness will be realized upon earth restored 
 and regenerated earth ; AVC shall enjoy a felicity and a 
 glory and a peace on this orb, in its resurrection state, 
 which poet's imagination never dreamed of, and which 
 painter's pencil would attempt in vain to embody. I be- 
 lieve that the groans of this wearied world shall close, 
 that the cry of sorrow that has risen perpetually from its 
 inhabitants shall be stilled for ever that it shall cease 
 to be an aceldama of the living, or a charnel-house of 
 the dead. I believe that the simoom shall no more sweep 
 its soil, nor the earthquake upheave it, nor the lightning's 
 flash rend its trees any more. This earth shall put off 
 its ashen garments, and doff its raiment of sackcloth ;
 
 486 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 all creation shall cast aside from its eyes the dark shroud 
 of sorrow that has dimmed them ; and we shall see 
 amid the glorious Apocalypse, the sun that shall rise to 
 set no more. " Come, Lord Jesus, even so, come 
 quickly ! " I believe that our poets shall lay aside their 
 mourning garments, and put on their priestly robes ; 
 and philosophy shall be the handmaid ministering at the 
 altar of the gospel ; and all literature, and all science, 
 and all knowledge, shall become instinct with glorious 
 inspiration, and shall blend their voices in deep-toned 
 and perpetual harmony, "Blessing, and glory, and honour, 
 and thanksgiving unto God, and to the Lamb who was 
 slain, for ever and ever." 
 
 But I dwell too much on scenes on which imagination 
 would love to expatiate scenes, nevertheless, which, if 
 before our eyes more continually, would make all that is 
 in the world grow very pale and dim. A man that can 
 anticipate a crown in glory, would see fainter charms in 
 a crown on earth. That man who has not an acre below, 
 but who has an inheritance incorruptible in reversion, 
 would have less desire for the lands and houses of this 
 world. Just as the sun shining on the brightest fire puts 
 that fire out, so a handful of the beams that come from 
 the central Sun of that millennial morn would extinguish 
 all that dazzles men's eyes, and captivates men's minds, 
 and rivets man as a slave and a drudge to a miserable 
 and a dying world. 
 
 But I pass on to notice the signs of His advent. I 
 will quote first a very few texts which allude to it. His 
 advent is attended with " times of refreshing from the 
 presence of the Lord ;" and, with " the time of the resti- 
 tution of all things." The appearing of Christ is called 
 " the revelation of Christ : " " looking for that blessed 
 hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Sa- 
 viour." In Matt. xxiv. 30, it is written, " And they shall 
 see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with 
 power and great glory." In 2 Thess. i. 7, 8, we read, 
 " When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with 
 his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on 
 them that know not God." In Acts i. 1 1, it is declared, 
 " This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven,
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 487 
 
 shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into 
 heaven." In Mark xiii. 35, " Watch ye, therefore ; for 
 ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at 
 even, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the 
 morning : lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping." 
 In 1 Thess. v. 2, " The day of the Lord cometh as a 
 thief in the night : " i. e. unexpectedly, suddenly. Matt. 
 xxiv. 27, " For as the lightning cometh out of the 
 east and shineth even unto the west," the lightning 
 gives no premonition of its approach " so shall also 
 the coming of the Son of Man be." And what shall 
 take place when He comes ? " In that day the heavens 
 shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements 
 shall melt with fervent heat ; the earth also, and the 
 works that are therein, shall be burned up." In 1 Thess. 
 iv. 16, 17, " The Lord himself shall descend from hea- 
 ven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and 
 with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall 
 rise first : then we which are alive and remain shall be 
 caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the 
 Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 
 Can there be plainer language than that of Isaiah xxiv. 
 23, " The Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and 
 in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously." Dan. 
 vii. 14, "And there was given him dominion, and 
 glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and lan- 
 guages, should serve him : his dominion is an ever- 
 lasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his 
 kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." 
 
 Then we read what is the character of the saints in 
 reference to it " waiting for that blessed hope ;" " wait- 
 ing for the coming of the Lord." The Lord Jesus pro- 
 mises that we shall reign with him that we " shall 
 appear with him in glory." No sooner had Jesus left 
 the earth at the ascension, than the cry was instantly 
 raised, " Come, Lord Jesus." The bride is not satisfied 
 with the home and the fortune, it is for the bridegroom 
 that she longs. No earthly substitute can satisfy the 
 Church. He only can who is her Lord. A paradise 
 without the tree of life would have no attraction. The
 
 488 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Millennium without Christ, a Millennium of glory and 
 beauty without Christ, would have no charms for a 
 Christian. It would be like a tune without a key-note 
 it would be tangled harmony it would be worse it 
 would be intolerable discord. It is a personal Christ on 
 which the believer trusts below : it is for a personal 
 Christ that the believer looks. Faith rests not upon a 
 dogma, even justification by faith: it rests upon the 
 living personal Christ, the Lord our Righteousness. 
 Hope expects not a mere Millennium, it expects the Lord 
 of the Millennium. The disciple who wrote the Apoca- 
 lypse, and who leaned upon the Saviour's bosom, and 
 he was neither sensual nor carnal, the instant that the 
 Saviour said, " Behold, I come quickly," added the deep- 
 toned Amen, which rose from the very depth of his 
 soul, " Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." The 
 night cometh first, and then the morn. I see the 
 shadows of a dark night already forecast upon the world 
 I see dark and ominous shadows creeping, like birds 
 of night, from every point of the horizon, all giving 
 tokens of an approaching storm that will rend and split 
 Europe into fragments. We may very speedily have to 
 witness men's souls, looking with fear for the things that 
 are coining upon the earth ; and thinking men, like 
 Arnold and others, who did not study prophecy, but who 
 looked at facts, phenomena, and science, felt their hearts, 
 as I shall show by a quotation by and by, fainting be- 
 cause of what they saw coming upon the world. But 
 the darkest night has its morn. The cloud that is 
 blackest has a rainbow gilding it. That night shall pass 
 away, before the rise of a glorious sun ; and the instant 
 that sun rises on a benighted world, the morn of the 
 millennial day shall overspread the earth with a new 
 and glorious aurora a zone of bright splendour an 
 atmosphere of beauty unparalleled. 
 
 Let me notice, however, some of the clear signs which 
 indicate the approach of that period. I described, in the 
 course of a recent lecture, the unclean spirits that go out 
 to deceive the nations of the earth under the sixth vial ; 
 and 1 showed you by incontestable proofs, that those
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 489 
 
 unclean spirits are at work in the midst of our people. 
 The first, I showed you, was Infidelity the spirit of the 
 dragon. I told you that it consisted not simply in 
 antagonism to Christianity, but that it consisted, like- 
 wise, in the absence of Christianity. I believe that one 
 half of the professors of the gospel are nothing better 
 than practical infidels. My dear friends, if our hearts 
 had God's light and love in them, the very statement of 
 the gospel would persuade us to embrace it. I need no 
 evidence of the corruption, the desperate corruption, of 
 man's nature, but just this, that he can hear truths that 
 electrify the redeemed in glory, for one sound of which 
 the lost in hell would give a thousand worlds ; and he has 
 no sooner heard them, than he goes forth, one to his 
 farm, and another to his field, and another to his mer- 
 chandise, and lives retaining all his responsibility for 
 of that he cannot divest himself but without one por- 
 tion of holiness, or loyalty, or prospect of peace. We are 
 told that the last age will be characterized by selfishness ; 
 and this is a predominant characteristic of the present 
 state of our world. Let any man take his station on any 
 of our great thoroughfares, as, for instance, near St. 
 Paul's, and let him look along the living mass that pours 
 down Cheapside ; it seems as if every man were so ab- 
 sorbed in himself, that if the man who runs before him 
 were to fall, he would just make him a stepping-stone 
 from which he would take a greater leap that he might 
 the sooner reach the Exchange. So truly selfish does 
 human nature show itself so selfish has human nature 
 become ! What do you do for the cause of Christ ? What 
 do you give ? You give, perhaps, some 10 a year for 
 wine and spirits, both probably useless. You give for 
 other luxuries and gratifications of sense other 10 a 
 year. How much do you give to the cause of Christ ? 
 a guinea a year, and you think you have thus acquitted 
 yourself of all responsibility before God. What a con- 
 trast are we to those in that day "who rejoiced that they 
 were counted worthy to suffer for his name's sake," and 
 gave up riches and home, and all that they had, as the 
 choicest gifts they could lay upon the altar of their Lord.
 
 490 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 Hear what men shall be, and let the people of London 
 sit for the contrast. Hear the inspired sketch, look to 
 the living men, and see if there be not a perfect coinci- 
 dence. In the last days men shall be, first, " lovers of 
 their own selves;" secondly, "covetous;" thirdly, 
 " boasters ;" fourthly, "proud ;" fifthly, "blasphemers ;" 
 sixthly, "disobedient to parents;" that beautiful, that 
 musical sound, father, is being banished from England's 
 homes, and that horrible importation from France, " our 
 governor," is being substituted in its place. Men shall 
 be " unthankful ;" what evidence of this in our churches, 
 in our Exchange, in the streets of our city ! " unholy, 
 without natural affection." 
 
 An awful and terrible characteristic of those days is 
 the increase and spread of Popery. If I look around 
 me I see on every side Popery pluming its wings, and 
 that great religious maniac, for that is his true name, 
 who has reigned at Rome for eighteen centuries, whose 
 lunacy and madness the Apostle foresaw when he says, 
 " the mystery of iniquity doth already work," putting 
 forth new and too successful efforts. His madness once 
 rose to such a height that the kings and sovereigns of 
 the earth conspired together to drag him from his throne 
 for the sake of their own safety. England had felt him 
 to be so intolerable a curse that she raised walls high and 
 thick between herself and all contact and communion 
 with him. This maniac has now made honest English- 
 men believe that he is a liberal Pontiff; that he is anxious 
 for liberty and freedom, and all good things ; but you 
 may depend upon it, it is but the cunning of the maniac, 
 seeking to find scope for the development of his terrible 
 passions. See whether I am a prophet of truth or a 
 prophet of error when I state that that power, so unsus- 
 pected by the generous, and open, and unsuspecting 
 hearts of Britons, will yet obtain a grasp of our country, 
 if we court him, so terrible, that the throne and the altar 
 will rock and reel beneath it ; and you will mourn the 
 day when you despised the predictions of the prophet, 
 and trusted to the conclusions of the " march of intel- 
 lect," or the philosophers and savans of the day.
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 491 
 
 I need not give you proofs of the spread of that ter- 
 rible system. . I can only say that its basilisk eye is 
 riveted on all that is dear and precious to us. Tract- 
 arianism is just the smoke that arises from it, and con- 
 ceals from the eyes of the masses the unclean locusts of 
 the spiritual Egypt. I believe that these Tractarians 
 are just the back-woodsmen of Popery its pioneers 
 making room for it caterers to the Pope ; some of 
 them his acknowledged servants. And there is no class 
 or description of his janissaries on whom Pope Pius IX. 
 looks with more consummate complacency than on those 
 who sign nobly Protestant articles, and at the same time 
 preach thoroughly Popish doctrine ; who take bread left 
 for Protestant ends, and eat it, while they propagate the 
 very errors against which they have sworn solemnly to 
 protest. 
 
 I see, then, in the spread of Popery, and in the spread 
 of that which I have called Popery without a Pope, the 
 evidence that we are at the close of the sixth vial, or 
 passing from under it to the seventh, and that the Lord 
 is at hand. I may mention another characteristic of 
 these latter times here and I wish to state it without 
 expressing any particle of political preference it is, 
 the utter dislocation of parties : there is no such thing 
 as party now. The old names that used to be the watch- 
 words of the different parties in the state are no more. 
 It seems as if some explosive force had entered the 
 hearts of all political parties and split them into a thou- 
 sand splinters. What does this indicate ? It is a law in 
 nature, that when a disintegration of particles has taken 
 place, it is always preparatory to new combinations. 
 The same law holds good in morals and in politics ; it 
 seems as if when all parties are thus dislocated and dis- 
 integrated and broken up, it were the preparation for 
 that tremendous conspiracy against God and against 
 man which is the perfect and full development of Anti- 
 christ, on whom the judgments of God shall descend, 
 and who shall be cast, with all that bear his mark, into 
 the lake that burneth for ever and ever. There is just 
 one thing on which almost all statesmen of the present 
 day are agreed they differ on almost every topic but
 
 492 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 thiS, viz. that the chains wound around the Romish 
 priesthood shall be taken off. I am not in favour of 
 penalties in these matters, if it be possible to dispense 
 with them ; but, is it not fair, when great statesmen are 
 convinced that the time is come for removing from the 
 statute book all restrictions from the Church of Rome, 
 that we should ask for at least a recognition of our 
 generosity by requesting the Pope to remove all pains, 
 and curses, and penalties against us from his statute 
 book ? In vain we ask him to do so ? Pius IX. boasts 
 of his liberality, and calls upon us to remove all pains 
 and penalties that were directed against him for our 
 defence, but he tells you he would as soon remove from 
 the Vatican itself as remove from his statute book one ex- 
 terminating bull, or expunge one decree that consigns us, 
 from our noble Queen upon her throne to the meanest of 
 her subjects, to destruction of soul and body in time and 
 in eternity, because of our opposition to him, and our 
 refusal to submit to his authority ; and yet strange it 
 is that we should expect any other treatment from this 
 quarter ! 
 
 Another sign of the last times, besides the increase 
 of Popery and Infidelity, and this dislocation and dis- 
 integration of parties, is the increased interest, as I 
 have told you, which is felt in the Jews. This is one 
 of the startling phenomena of the age, one of the 
 premonitory signs of closing cycles, and of a coming 
 Lord. As I told you in the morning, there is not a 
 nation on the continent of Europe that is not more or 
 less agitated about the state and position of the Jew. 
 This excitement is the more strange, inasmuch as those 
 Jews are not troublesome political disturbers ; their power 
 as a party is nothing, and as for themselves, give them 
 twenty per cent., and they will feel contempt for all the 
 political privileges which you can bestow upon them ; 
 yet, is it not a fact that every state seems afraid lest it 
 should be suspected for a moment that it withholds one 
 political privilege from the Jew ? Poor weary-footed 
 wanderer ! give him, for a little, a home in your land 
 let him, for a fe\^ days, have the possibility of it in the 
 midst of you, I will promise he will not trouble you
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 493 
 
 long ; he is the denizen of a nobler clime his heart 
 leans towards Jerusalem, as the needle to the pole. 
 Amid the debris of every dynasty, his eye rests upon 
 Salem, and his heart beats and pants for the coming of 
 the great Messiah, the true Solomon, the hope of Israel. 
 When I look upon a Jew, he reminds me of some dis- 
 crowned monarch, swept from his throne for some great 
 offence, cast into the midst of a strange land ; his very 
 looks indicate a consciousness of some dread crime, by 
 which he is haunted every where. The Jews are a na- 
 tional phenomenon, which nothing can explain but the 
 gospel ; a phenomenon that shall play a part in the his- 
 tory of Europe the grandest and the most momentous in 
 all the records of the past. 
 
 I may notice, also, as a prelude to our Lord's advent, 
 the great efforts that are made in every portion of the 
 globe at self-perfection, or rather, as it has been called, 
 self- regeneration. Do I not see throughout the length 
 and breadth of society the most strenuous, and in their 
 place the most commendable, efforts to add to the perfec- 
 tion of our nature, to expedite the full development of all 
 we are capable of, in short, if possible, to bring on a 
 millennium of happiness without Christ, in the midst of 
 our earth. For instance, our sanitary improvements, the 
 most proper and the most laudable, are pointed to by 
 some as if they could bid defiance to the judgments of 
 God, and even to death itself; and hydropathy, and 
 homoeopathy, and successive pathies, concocted by the 
 talent of man, are set forth, one after another, as the true 
 elixir of human life. Men seem to feel that they ought 
 to live for ever, and recollecting their original glory, 
 they seek to grasp any thing which will promise to en- 
 able them to do so. 
 
 Chemistry writes its books, and pursues its brilliant 
 discoveries, as if persuaded that a world that groans 
 beneath the curse has in it the germ or secret of millen- 
 nial blessedness. 
 
 Education is the great demand of the day. Men are not 
 agreed in what they should be educated. Some say 
 they must be educated in the absence of all religion, 
 which is just as absurd as that it is enough to cultivate
 
 494 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 the intellect, and dwarf the heart to teach the young 
 the knowledge of the creature but not of the Creator. 
 But if men are not agreed what must be taught, they 
 are all perfectly agreed that men must be taught ; and 
 science, and geology, and astronomy, are constantly 
 toiling and boasting of their discoveries, and some of 
 them are brilliant ; and Scientific Institutions, and Me- 
 chanics' Institutions, and Athenaeums are growing up on 
 all sides of us : all this is knowledge, running to and 
 fro, and increased ; and what will be the result of it all ? 
 After the most successful efforts have been made in culti- 
 vating the earth, till it is almost overspread with millen- 
 nial crops after science, geology, astronomy, have done 
 their utmost to make man happy, by making him wise 
 and rich, man will feel that he has failed to reach the 
 happiness of which our nature was made originally 
 capable, and the cry will rise from the still aching heart 
 of disappointed humanity with more piercing intensity, 
 "Come, Lord Jesus;" and he will come and make it 
 happy for ever. 
 
 Another feature of the times that will precede the last 
 day, will be great activity on the part of Satan. That 
 activity shows itself now in a thousand shapes : some- 
 times Satan appears as an angel of light, in all the 
 splendours of the archangel fallen ; sometimes as he is ; 
 in all his efforts, however, he combines the wisdom of 
 the archangel with the malignity of the archfiend ; he 
 seems now as if dreading the everlasting fires in which 
 he must soon live, and suffer, and is, therefore, anxious 
 to attain a footing in some nook or corner of the globe 
 where he may stave off, if not for ever, at least for a 
 longer time, the great judgment which he knows must 
 ultimately overtake him. 
 
 We see another symbol of the last days in the rank 
 systems of error that grow up about us. Germany and 
 America are overrun with fanaticism of the most hideous 
 description. Even England is not without its fanatics ; 
 and as religion becomes more earnest in the hearts of the 
 few, fanaticism will become rampant in the hearts of the 
 many. Men can never be without a religion. They 
 must have a religion of some sort.
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 495 
 
 We may expect also in the last days, and immediately 
 prior to the advent of Christ, great and awful j udgments, 
 as our Lord himself has predicted, and tribulations such 
 as have not been even since the world began. The signs 
 of these loom in the distant horizon. I showed you some 
 of them in the pestilence that fell upon the vegetable 
 world in the crashing that sounded through the length 
 and breadth of our commercial system within the last 
 few years, the remains of which are now visiting the re- 
 spectable tradesmen of our country, like the mists that 
 settle first on mountain heights and then descend to the 
 valleys that lie around them : we see it in the state of 
 things across the Channel all society fermenting and 
 ill at ease. There is not a nation of Europe that does 
 not deprecate war, but there is not a nation of Europe 
 that does not place its hand upon its sword-hilt, and hold 
 itself ready for war. Preparation for it is laid down as 
 a duty. " Men's hearts failing them for fear of the things 
 that are coming on the earth," is literally true. . Hence 
 that profound thinker, whose biography has improved so 
 many Dr. Arnold made this remark, and it is striking 
 as coming from so severe and disciplined a mind as his : 
 " My sense of the evils of the times that are coming, and 
 of the prospects to which I am bringing up my poor 
 children, is overwhelming; times are coming in which 
 the devil will fight his best, and that in good earnest." 
 He was no fanatic who said this, but a man of a cairn 
 and reflective mind. 
 
 Another sign of the near approach of the advent of 
 Christ will be the spread of knowledge. Daniel gives 
 us this indication when he says, " Many shall run to and 
 fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Do we not see 
 the signs of this around us ? A century ago, if a man 
 made a discovery in science and art, it was likely to be 
 his fortune ; but now, if one makes a discovery in che- 
 mistry, in science, or in any department of knowledge, 
 on which one would have staked a fortune in former 
 times, he will find that a discovery made in 1848 is 
 superseded by a more brilliant one before the year has 
 closed. We see steam running and executing the errand 
 of man, and carrying five hundred at once at the rate of
 
 496 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 fifty miles an hour ! Man has made the greatest ap- 
 proach to the power, though he has not made a cor- 
 respondent approach to the holiness of God, when he 
 takes the lightnings and makes them carry his messages. 
 How true is it that many run to and fro, and knowledge 
 is increased. We have explored the depths of the 
 ocean, and searched the caves of the Alps ; the march 
 of intellect is the name with which the present age has 
 christened itself. Not that we Christians should fear. 
 Let that chemist work in his laboratory ; encourage that 
 astronomer, who spends the night in cataloguing groups 
 of stars; let that mathematician pore over books, and 
 waste the midnight oil ; let that schoolmaster prosecute 
 his work ; let all men work hard, and work constantly, 
 they are unconsciously under an impulse of which they 
 see not the end. That impulse is a Divine one ; they are 
 opening channels for the gospel ; they are decking and 
 dressing those handmaids that are to accompany the bride 
 when she meets the Bridegroom ; they are lighting new 
 altar-candles, and polishing new gems for his temple ; it 
 is the rush of the waves of science, and literature, and 
 knowledge, that roll onward and upward to the presence 
 of the everlasting throne, there to reflect the glory of 
 Him that made them, and the riches of Him who is 
 throned upon the very riches of the universe itself; and 
 as if it were a forecast light of this blessed result, every 
 discovery made within the last few years has been a dis- 
 covery contributing to show the truth and the har- 
 mony of the gospel with the facts of the universe. 
 For instance, when we were told, in that very unphiloso- 
 phical book, "Vestiges of Creation," that there is in 
 a certain part of the firmament a mass of nebulous 
 matter, and that this nebulous matter gradually forms 
 itself into a shape, till fully developed it becomes a 
 greater orb, a world in our planetary system ; Lord 
 Rosse turned his telescope to the alleged nebulous 
 matter, which was said to be proof positive that 
 worlds were made without a maker, and he discovered 
 that instead of being unmade embryo worlds, it consists 
 of clusters of stars, or worlds already made, and larger 
 than our own. Science is one of those which will outlast
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 497 
 
 the Millennium itself, as the interpreter of the book of 
 Nature. When I look up into that spangled and illu- 
 minated sky when I look at those countless altar-fires 
 that burn perpetually, and when by their light I see star 
 beyond star, and planet beyond planet, and when I have 
 viewed by the most powerful telescope the remotest stars 
 of our system, and when I find that those remotest stars 
 are but the sentinels and the outposts of that mighty 
 host that lies scattered throughout the plains of infi- 
 nitude, silently hymning perpetual praise around the 
 throne of Him that made them, and giving glory to Him 
 that lighted them up with all their splendour, I see in 
 these the indisputable evidences of Deity, and I am con- 
 strained to pity the man who can speak of a creation 
 without a Creator, as I am constrained to pity the man 
 who can think of such a revelation as that of the Bible 
 without the recognition of God as its revealer. 
 
 Let me notice another evidence of the nearness of the 
 Saviour's approach in the present day, and that is, in- 
 creased missionary effort. I showed you that the mis- 
 sionary enterprise began to be carried out during the 
 outpouring of the vials with augmented energy. All 
 the great Missionary Societies are the offspring of the 
 last fifty years. The Baptist Society arose in 1792; 
 then came in succession, like mountain peaks, catching 
 successively the rays of sunrise, the London Missionary, 
 the Church Missionary, the Church of Scotland schemes, 
 and the Wesleyan Missionary societies, all of which 
 fulfilled that Apocalyptic picture of the angel flying 
 abroad with the everlasting gospel unto all the nations 
 of the earth : and what does Christ himself say ? " This 
 gospel of the kingdom shall be preached unto all na- 
 tions;" for what purpose? Is it said, to convert them, 
 and then shall the end come ? No : " this gospel of the 
 kingdom shall be preached among all nations, for a wit- 
 ness ;" and what then ? and " then shall the end come." 
 Now the Bible has been translated into the tongue of 
 every nation, and the gospel has been preached to every 
 people. At length, China, which stood out so long, has 
 been stormed by the soldiers of the gospel, and the Chris- 
 2 K
 
 498 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 tian banner has been unfolded in the midst of it. The 
 event that follows is the advent of Christ. 
 
 Another sign of the approach of our Lord is the apa- 
 thy and unbelief that shall be felt with regard to it. One 
 of the signs that Christ is near is the fact that even 
 Christians will explain this nearness away. There is no 
 one thing stated more fully or more frequently in the word 
 of God than this, that, in these last days, men shall say, 
 " Where is the promise of his coming ? for since the 
 fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from 
 the beginning of the creation." " When they shall say, 
 Peace and safety ; then sudden destruction cometh upon 
 them." Is not this what men are saying now ? I doubt 
 not some will retire from this Hall and say, " What folly 
 and fanaticism we have heard ! we cannot believe a word 
 of what he has said." Well, if you like, reject all my 
 views of Apocalyptic chronology reject all my historical 
 explanations ; but at least do not reject this, that Christ, 
 who died upon the cross, will come, and when ye think 
 not, and reign, wearing his many crowns, and sit on his 
 glorious throne. Look for him, and the same Christ will 
 come again, the Husband to the widow, the Bridegroom 
 to the bride. 
 
 When I think of what succeeds the time when he does 
 come, I can scarcely realize that glorious Sabbath which 
 will overspread the earth ! that noble song which will 
 be heard when the saints shall sing together, Holy, holy, 
 holy, is the Lord God of hosts ! What a flood of beauty, 
 magnificence, and glory will roll over this now shattered 
 orb, like the countless waves of an illuminated ocean ; 
 illuminated by Christ, the great central Sun, around 
 whom all systems revolve, and from whom all beauty 
 comes. And, my dear friends, if there be the least proba- 
 bility in what I have said, that Christ is at hand, is it not 
 our duty to pause to ponder, to search if it be so ? When 
 men heard that there was a new star some where to be 
 detected in the firmament, there were some thousands 
 of telescopes every night directed to the skies, and count- 
 less star-gazers searched, if, peradventure, they might 
 discover it. My dear friends, a Star comes, brighter and
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 499 
 
 more beautiful than any other, " the bright and morning 
 Star," too long concealed by clouds which are" about to 
 be chased away ; why should not our hearts look for 
 him ? why should not the believer, who has shared in 
 the bitterness and in the blessings of his cross, pray and 
 pant for him, if, peradventure, he may share in the 
 splendours of his crown ? Is not the Lord welcome as 
 he is dear to us ? Crushed and bleeding humanity, under 
 the suffering of its thousand wrongs, cries, " Come, Lord 
 Jesus." The earth, weary with its groans and the sobs 
 of its children, cries, " Come, Lord Jesus." The perse- 
 cuted saints in Tahiti and in Madeira, in the dens and 
 caves and solitary places of the earth, cry, " Come, Lord 
 Jesus." And, surely, many a heart in this Hall, that 
 has been warmed by his love that has been refreshed 
 by his peace, and sanctified by his grace, shall likewise 
 raise the same cry, " Come, Lord Jesus ;" and the sub- 
 lime response will descend from heaven like a wave 
 from the ocean of love overflowing men's hearts, " Be- 
 hold, I come quickly." As in some great and populous 
 city, the train comes thundering along uninterrupted 
 and unobstructed to its destination, so I believe Christ 
 will come in the chariot of the gospel ; right through all 
 the traffic, and the arts, and the sciences, and the litera- 
 ture of the world ; all things giving it an impulse, and 
 none presenting an obstruction. 
 
 Brethren, I will this day close my lectures in Exeter 
 Hall. I thank this vast audience for the solemn silence 
 with which they have listened, and I praise God for the 
 striking effects of which I have heard. I anticipate the 
 day when I shall meet some of you in " the first resur- 
 rection," and rejoice together with you in the presence 
 of God and of the Lamb. As I have told you, my 
 delight in the study, and my joy in preaching to you, 
 have been more than a compensation for all the toil I 
 have gone through. What I have preached to you were 
 not lectures got up in a day, but they have been, more 
 or less, the gathering of years that are passed. These 
 lectures, I know, have been blessed to many : and, my 
 dear friends, if there has been any effect produced by 
 2 K 2
 
 500 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 what I have said, that effect has arisen, first, from the 
 weighty truths I have enunciated ; next, in that I have 
 spoken just what I felt, and stated just what I believed, 
 and nothing more. And no man speaks from the heart 
 without reaching the heart. I have addressed all sorts 
 of persons in this Hall, from almost the very highest in 
 the land down to the very lowest. I have heard of 
 crowds of Episcopalians, Independents, Baptists, Wes- 
 leyans, and numbers of our Free Church brethren ; I 
 have addressed all as forgetting and forgiving minor dif- 
 ferences, and thinking of that glorious cement that will 
 bind us perpetually in one. I have given offence to 
 some ; it was impossible to avoid it : I never can con- 
 sent to pass along like a footman, apologizing to every 
 person that he touches for the trouble and inconvenience 
 he inflicts : I must go right on upon the rails that God has 
 laid down : I have no object but to speak the truth, and 
 the whole truth ; and whether you will hear, or whether 
 you will forbear, this only relieves me, He that judgeth 
 me is God : it is a light thing to be laughed at by some ; 
 it is a lighter thing to be scorned by others ; it is a 
 glorious and a blessed thing to know, that He that judg- 
 eth me, and He that approveth, is God. 
 
 And, my dear friends, think again that we must all 
 appear, some in the first, and some in the second resur- 
 rection : oh, if these be realities, let me put it to you, why 
 should any one of you hesitate whether you shall be in 
 the first or in the last resurrection ? Why is it, when 
 precious atoning blood is offered, and a glorious Saviour 
 is preached to you and an instant welcome addressed to 
 the worst and the very vilest of sinners let me ask you 
 let me put it to you dear friends, bear with me for a 
 moment while I put it to you why should you die ? why 
 perish ? why not be saved ? When I bid you be Christians, 
 I just bid you be happy. My dear friends, you will allow 
 me to speak from experience. I know what the gospel is, 
 because I have tasted its sweetness ; and I am perfectly 
 convinced that no man can be happy, even in this world, 
 who has not a personal interest in the Son of God. It is 
 only when you can lift up your hearts and say, " The Rock
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. 501 
 
 of ages is my trust infinitude, with all its grandeur, is my 
 home eternity, with its ceaseless ages, is my lifetime 
 the great God my Father, the Lamb upon the throne my 
 Saviour ; that you can add, Come weal, come woe, come 
 life, come death, come revolution, and earthquake, and 
 tumults of the people, nothing can separate me from 
 Christ. Oh ! with what an elastic footstep will you walk 
 the world ! with what courage will you brave its surges, 
 and its storms, and its trials, conscious that all things 
 work together for good to them that love God, and are 
 called according to his purpose ! 
 
 My dear friends, I say to many of you, Farewell ; and 
 I say that in a sense in which it is not often uttered. I 
 say it not lightly, but solemnly. May you fare well in 
 the first resurrection. May you fare well at the judg- 
 ment-day. May you fare well in time. May you fare 
 well in eternity : and at that day when sighs and fare- 
 wells shall cease, may we meet before the throne of God 
 and of the Lamb, and so be for ever with the Lord ! 
 Amen, and Amen. 
 
 Come, then, and, added to thy many crowns, 
 
 Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth, 
 
 Thou who alone art worthy. 
 
 Thy saints proclaim thee King ; and in their hearts 
 
 Thy title is engraven with a pen 
 
 Dipt in the fountain of eternal love. 
 
 Thy saints proclaim thee King ; and thy delay 
 
 Gives courage to their foes, who, could they see 
 
 The dawn of thy last advent, long desired, 
 
 Would creep into the bowels of the hills, 
 
 And flee for safety to the falling rocks. 
 
 The very spirit of the world is tired 
 
 Of its own taunting question, ask'd so long, 
 
 " Where is the promise of your Lord's approach ? "
 
 LECTURE XXVI. 
 
 ABSTRACT OP LECTURES. 
 
 " Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keep- 
 eth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." 
 
 EEV. xvi. 15. 
 
 THIS evening, as I announced, my Lectures in Exeter 
 Hall on this most interesting book draw to a close. I 
 cannot help repeating that the weariness I have felt in 
 my researches, and the exhaustion which I have endured 
 in the delivery of them, have been more than compen- 
 sated by the delight I have experienced in study, and the 
 positive profit they have brought to my own heart. I 
 have this day, on this first Sabbath of another year, 
 having addressed you on the last Sabbath of the year that 
 is closed, to remind you that there will be a last day as 
 well as a last year, and that last day is the day that we 
 ought to anticipate, and realize more than any day in our 
 whole biography. This is the last day on which I shall 
 address you here : the first Sabbath of a year that we 
 have seen begin, but the close of which who among us 
 shall see ? The youngest may die ; the oldest must die 
 soon : and there is not one in this vast congregation that 
 can insure his life for 1848. But there is not one that 
 may not insure a crown of glory that fadeth not away, 
 by taking into his heart the price and purchase of it 
 the precious blood of the Son of God. 
 
 But I have thought, my dear friends, that, as many of 
 those who regularly assembled in the morning did not hear 
 the evening lectures, it might not be unprofitable, if I 
 avail myself of a suggestion made to me by a member of 
 my own flock last Sabbath-day, and give something like
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 503 
 
 a resume, or a sketch of the leading points I have suc- 
 cessively brought before you. In the morning of each 
 Sabbath, as you are aware, I have preached on the dis- 
 tinctive characteristics of the gospel of Jesus : * in the 
 evenings of the successive Sabbaths we have assembled 
 in this Hall during nearly six months that are now 
 closed, I have expounded to you what I conceive to be 
 the just and true meaning of the Apocalypse ; and I 
 think that it will not be uninstructive if I slightly 
 touch on the various points to which I have turned your 
 attention, and bring, as it were, the whole Apocalyptic 
 drama in one bright vision, as shortly as I can, before 
 your minds. 
 
 My first lecture consisted of an exposition of the 
 claims of the Apocalypse to occupy its place in the sacred 
 canon. I showed you the incontestable evidence by 
 which it is proved to be Divine. I laid before you, 
 too, the various links of evidence by which it is proved 
 to be the composition of John, the beloved disciple who 
 leaned upon the Saviour's breast. I showed you the 
 place of its composition, Patmos ; the year of its com- 
 position, A. D. 96 ; and then I stated what I conceived to 
 be the duties of an impartial commentator on the Apoca- 
 lypse to be careful not to attempt to play the prophet 
 whilst discharging the humble duty of an expositor of 
 the Scripture. I urged, too, that the failures of the 
 past were no reasons why there should be failures in the 
 future. I showed you that every wreck that lies in the 
 Channel has the buoy attached to it, by those whose 
 duty it is to attend to it, and by that wreck other navies 
 are preserved from destruction. In the same manner, 
 every failure to explain the Apocalypse is only a guide 
 to future expositors, and affords a stronger presumption 
 that the next attempt shall not fail. Each successive 
 commentator casts light upon it, and brings forth truth 
 from it ; and as the day approaches when the great 
 drama shall be closed, and all its mysterious contents 
 shall be made known, we shall then wonder that we 
 
 * I propose publishing a volume containing my Sabbath, morn- 
 ing discourses in Exeter Hall.
 
 .504 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 doubted where we ought to have believed, and shrunk 
 from study where we ought to have prayerfully and pa- 
 tiently investigated. 
 
 In my next lecture I laid before you what I called 
 " the Gospel according to the Apocalypse," from the 
 text, " Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our 
 sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and 
 priests to God and his Father ; to Him be glory for 
 ever and ever." I showed the distinction that seems 
 to subsist between the Gospel according to Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke, and John, and the Gospel according to the 
 Apocalypse. In the first Christ is the priest, in the 
 second Christ is the priest and the king. In the Gos- 
 pel of St. John he is exhibited with the cross ; in the 
 Apocalypse of St. John he is displayed with many 
 crowns upon his head. In the one he has the suffering 
 to undergo in the other fie has the royalty to receive. 
 In the one he is in the midst of his agony and bloody 
 sweat in the other he is seated on his throne, and 
 cherubim and seraphim adore him. The one is the 
 completion of the other the Gospel of St. John would 
 have been incomplete without the Apocalypse of St. 
 John : each gives a profile, both give the full face of 
 Him who is the " brightness of the Father's glory the 
 express image of his person." 
 
 In my third lecture I endeavoured to describe, or 
 rather to open, those symbols which are known and re- 
 vealed in the Apocalypse by the name of the Seals. I 
 stated that God, in revealing things that were future, 
 made use of symbols, for this reason : If there were 
 no symbols, but marked predictions of the most inevita- 
 ble events, man's agency, responsibility, and free-will 
 would be hampered. If, again, there were no predic- 
 tions of the future at all, in any shape, or in any way 
 intelligible, there would be nothing to cheer man in the 
 prospects of the future, or to confirm man in the 
 statements of God's holy word. He has therefore given 
 us symbols so dark that man's freedom and respon- 
 sibility may not be crushed, and yet so luminous that 
 the patient and prayerful inquirer will find light if he
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 50.5 
 
 will only study them. I explained that the chief of these 
 symbols were divided into three great divisions : first, 
 seven Seals, denoting seven successive historical condi- 
 tions or states of the great empire in which the Christian 
 Church was to play so prominent a part ; then seven 
 Trumpets ; then seven Vials : the seventh seal being an 
 epitome of the seven Trumpets, and the seventh trumpet 
 being a sketch in brief, or an epitome of the seven Vials ; 
 and the whole twenty-one symbols embracing a complete 
 history of the future from the year 96, when John was 
 in Patmos, till the close of the century that now is, when 
 the mystery shall be complete, and the great drama of 
 mankind shall be wound up. 
 
 The first seal, you will recollect, was thus stated : " I 
 beheld a white horse, and he that sat on him had a 
 bow ; and a crown was givgn unto him : and he went 
 forth conquering and to conquer." I showed you first 
 that the horse is used in this book as the symbol of the 
 Roman empire. The reason I gave you for it was very 
 plain the horse was the national symbol of Rome. If 
 you speak of the thistle you mean Scotland if you speak 
 of the shamrock you allude to Ireland if you speak of 
 the rose you refer to England ; so, if you speak of the 
 horse in the symbolic sense, you make reference to 
 Rome. Rome was called the "gens Mavortia" the 
 nation of Mars : the horse was the animal consecrated, or 
 sacred, to Mars, and on certain Roman coins there is 
 found upon the one side the horse, and the word " Roma" 
 over it, and upon the obverse the portrait of the reign- 
 ing Roman emperor. 
 
 In the first four seals, therefore, I showed you that as 
 the horse was the symbol of Rome, Rome must be the 
 nation referred to, and that the successive states, or 
 phases, or colours of the horse, must denote the suc- 
 cessive states of that empire. White is the symbol of 
 prosperity, and the emperor is represented as going 
 forth conquering and to conquer. He is also repre- 
 sented as having a bow in his hand. I showed you that 
 the bow was the symbol of Crete, just as the shamrock 
 is the symbol of Ireland, the thistle of Scotland, or the 
 rose of England. The Apocalyptic symbol of a Roman
 
 506 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 emperor with a bow in his hand would seem, therefore, 
 to convey an allusion, more or less remote, to Crete ; and 
 thus it turns out in history that Nerva was the first em- 
 peror of Rome who was of a Cretan family, and he com- 
 menced the Cretan dynasty ; the Apocalyptic symbol point- 
 ing out the historic fact with perfect and minute accuracy. 
 Thus, then, under the first seal, the Roman empire is 
 represented as in a state of great national prosperity. 
 
 The words of the second seal are these : " And there 
 went out another horse that was red : and power was given 
 to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and 
 that they should kill one another ; and there was given 
 unto him a great sword." And you will observe that in 
 the original it is to take, not peace, but the peace (rr)v 
 upjivriv) L e. the peace established under the previous 
 seal when all was prosperous and peaceful. Red, I ex- 
 plained to you, was the symbol of bloodshed : and I 
 illustrated this passage by referring to the fact that the 
 reception of a sword, in the language of Rome, was equi- 
 valent to the constituting a person a praetor a prastorian- 
 prefect, or one of the highest military officers of the 
 empire : the statement of the reception of a sword pointed 
 therefore to that office ; and the power of these officers 
 to take peace from the earth, together with the previous 
 part of the symbol, indicated a time of internal bloodshed 
 and of war. Such a time did eventually take place. The 
 first seal extended from the year 96, when John wrote 
 the Apocalypse, to the year 180, commencing with the 
 reign of Nerva, and ending with that of Mark Antonine. 
 The second, from that period to 249, during which time 
 Rome was visited with the most fearful bloodshed and 
 intestine war. 
 
 The next seal is thus described : " I beheld, and lo, a 
 black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of 
 balances in his hand ; and I heard a voice in the midst 
 of the four beasts, saying, A measure of wheat for a 
 penny, and three measures of barley for a penny, and 
 see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." I showed you 
 that this referred to a period in the history of Rome when 
 the whole land was oppressed by injustice the balances 
 evidently relating to the administration of the justice of
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES 507 
 
 the empire, as I showed by reference to the symbol ; and 
 I historically demonstrated the fact, that the grinding 
 exactions of the governors of Rome, in the language of 
 Gibbon, had brought the empire to the very verge of 
 exhaustion and ruin. 
 
 I then referred to the fourth seal : " I looked, and be- 
 hold a pale horse : and his name that sat upon him was 
 Death, and hell followed with him. And power was 
 given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to 
 kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, 
 and with the beasts of the earth." I showed you that 
 this "hell" was Hades, or the grave I showed from 
 historic fact, that from the year 248 to the year 268, 
 pestilence overflowed the length and breadth of the land 
 " The wild beasts," in the language of the historian, 
 " from man's failing, and the supplies of man's existence 
 being withdrawn, rushed into the cities, and completed 
 the havoc that death had begun ; " and the symbol of 
 Death riding on the pale horse, with the grave opening 
 at his heels to receive the victims that he mowed down, 
 was an exact symbolical picture of the real state of the 
 empire from the year 248 to the year 268. 
 
 Then the fifth seal was the spectacle of those under 
 the altar that were slain for the testimony of Jesus, and 
 for the word of God, saying, " How long ?" This I ex- 
 plained to you to represent the persecutions of the Chris- 
 tian Church from the year 303 to 313. 
 
 Then we have the sixth seal, where some great change 
 seems to have taken place immediately after the fifth seal 
 had been opened, and after the sealing had taken place. 
 That change I showed to be Rome casting away its idol 
 gods sweeping the Pantheon of all its idolized tenantry 
 recognising the gospel as the national religion, exalt- 
 ing its ministers, rightly or wrongly, to the highest places 
 in the state ; and Christianity, from being the religion 
 of the catacombs, the dens, and caves of the earth, be- 
 coming the religion of the palace, of the cathedral, of 
 churches magnificent in architecture, and protected by 
 the sceptre of the reigning monarch. 
 
 Immediately after this exaltation of Christianity there
 
 508 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 follows the sealing of the 144,000. That, as I explained 
 to you, signifies that Christianity in the hours of its 
 prosperity suffered more than it did in the days of its 
 depression that the gospel was a purer and a nobler 
 thing when crushed by the persecutions of Nero, than 
 when it nestled beneath the shadow of the imperial 
 throne of Constantine ; and whether it was right or 
 whether it was Avrong thus to elevate the gospel, it is 
 matter of fact that in the catacombs and caves of the 
 earth the Church retained her garments unsullied, her 
 communion with her Lord unbroken ; but the moment 
 the heads that were exposed to the tempests were crowned 
 with mitres, and the catacombs exchanged for cathedrals, 
 she laid aside her robes of beauty and of glory, put on 
 the gorgeous dress of Caesar, became shorn of her real 
 strength and her attributes of grandeur, and ground, a 
 miserable drudge, at Caesar's mill, and at Caesar's bidding. 
 I am not called on in this place to pronounce whether 
 that elevation were scripturally right or wrong, I merely 
 comment on historic facts, the substance of which I have 
 now stated. 
 
 But in the midst of all this I showed you, while the 
 visible Church thus enthroned by the emperor had 
 ceased to be scriptural, God was bringing out his true 
 Church. The Apostacy was now gathering strength 
 every day the visible Church was ceasing to be the 
 true Church, God therefore causes to emerge the 1 44,000 
 sealed ones, i. e. his own election, his own redeemed 
 people, the true links of the true succession, the sons of 
 God in the world, but not of the world. 
 
 Now, having shown you that the visible Church be- 
 came apostate, and that the true Church was restricted 
 only to the few or the handful, then a series of judg- 
 ments was poured out upon the apostate Church, 
 described under the symbolical figure of the seven 
 trumpets. I may here digress to observe that God has 
 thus dealt with nations in almost every part of their 
 existence. You recollect that passage in Amos where 
 God is about to judge his people for their manifold trans- 
 gressions (Amos iv. 6 12). Now if I should classify
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 509 
 
 these verses under Apocalyptic symbols, you would 
 see the complete harmony that exists in God's dealings 
 in all dispensations of his grace. Thus in verse 6, there 
 is the first trumpet ; " I have also given you cleanness 
 of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your 
 places : yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the 
 Lord God." Thus one trumpet sounds ; but the result 
 is no repentance. It is therefore followed by the second 
 trumpet, if I may use the expression ; "And also I have 
 withholden the rain from you when there were yet 
 three months to the harvest : and I caused it to rain 
 upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another 
 city ; one piece was rained upon, and the piece where- 
 upon it reigned not, withered. So two or three cities 
 wandered unto one city to drink water ; but they were 
 not satisfied : yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the 
 Lord." There is the second trumpet. Then the third 
 trumpet sounds : " I have smitten you with blasting and 
 mildew : when your gardens, and your vineyards, and 
 your fig-trees, and your olive-trees increased, the palnier- 
 worm devoured them : yet have ye not returned unto 
 me, saith the Lord." Then the fourth trumpet sounds : 
 " I have sent among you the pestilence after the man- 
 ner of Egypt : your young men have I slain with the 
 sword, and have taken away your horses ; and I have 
 made the stink of your camps to come up unto your 
 nostrils : yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the 
 Lord." There is another trumpet : " I have overthrown 
 some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning : 
 yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord." 
 There is the sixth trumpet. Now what is the seventh ? 
 " Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel : and be- 
 cause I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, 
 O Israel." There is the sounding of the seventh. God's 
 judgments in the past are all in harmony with God's 
 judgments in the future ; both are his commissioners to 
 walk the world, and do the behests of his will. 
 
 I endeavoured to open up to you the meaning of the 
 seven trumpets in the same manner that I explained the
 
 510 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 seven seals, by historic facts. I showed you that 
 trumpets, in the Levitical economy, were used, first to 
 proclaim feasts or festivals to the people, or to proclaim 
 war against the enemy. So they are used in the Apoca- 
 lypse. The first trumpet sounded after Christendom had 
 become apostate, and the judgments of that trumpet we 
 read fell upon the Roman empire in the shape of " hail 
 and storm" i. e. desolating and destructive judgments, 
 mingled with blood or bloodshed, and they were cast 
 upon the earth : " and the third part of trees Avas burnt 
 up, and all green grass was burnt up." You read that 
 Alaric the Goth burst upon the empire at this time, 
 swept it with his victorious sword, deluged it with blood, 
 and it almost fell beneath the severity of the onslaught. 
 We read that the second angel sounded, " and as it were 
 a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, 
 and the third part of the sea became blood ; and the 
 third part of the creatures that were in the sea, and had 
 life, died ; and the third part of the ships were de- 
 stroyed." I showed you that under this trumpet the 
 maritime shores of the Roman empire, its ships and 
 fleets, were the subjects of suffering : I opened history, 
 and read, that as Alaric fell upon the land, and swept it 
 with fire, and deluged it with blood, in order to fulfil the 
 symbols of the second trumpet ; so Geneseric, according 
 to this trumpet, fell upon the ships and maritime power 
 of Rome. Three times th'e fleets of the empire were 
 opposed to him three times they were almost annihil- 
 ated ; and, as if to show the mysterious nature of his 
 mission, when his pilot asked Geneseric to what coast 
 should he steer ? the reply of the Goth was, " Leave 
 that to the winds of heaven, they will waft us to the 
 guilty coasts." He desolated every island, and smote 
 with destruction every shore, and totally exterminated 
 the fleets of Rome. Suddenly he drops from the stage, 
 and all again is still. 
 
 The third trumpet sounds, "And there fell a great 
 star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell 
 upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains 
 of waters." I showed you that the rivers and fountains
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTtRES. 511 
 
 of waters, wherever they are alluded to in the Apoca- 
 lypse, denote the people that dwell upon the banks of 
 the rivers the great rivers of Europe, the Danube, the 
 Rhine, and the Po. Accordingly we read, when the 
 third trumpet sounds, that Attila, who was called the 
 Scourge of God, instantly descended upon the banks of 
 the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po, and swept from 
 them every nation that opposed him, and fell like a 
 burning mountain from the sky, upon every section of 
 the geographical territory so graphically described in 
 these symbols. 
 
 The fourth trumpet sounded, " And the third part of 
 the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and 
 the third part of the stars ; so as the third part of them 
 was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of 
 it, and the night likewise." I explained to you that the 
 sun and moon in the Apocalypse denote always the im- 
 perial or sovereign power. Accordingly, we read in 
 history that Odoacer, the last of the Gothic dynasty, 
 marched upon Rome, after Alaric had fallen upon the 
 land, and Geneseric upon the sea, and Attila upon 
 the rivers ; and swept the whole imperial territory ; 
 the sun was darkened : and accordingly we read that 
 Odoacer marched upon Rome, the capital itself ; com- 
 manded, with his drawn sword, that Augustulus, the 
 emperor that then reigned, should abdicate his throne, 
 resign the insignia of sovereignty, and that all the em- 
 blems of empire should be transferred to Constantinople. 
 Here we have the sun darkened, or the imperial power 
 withdrawn. 
 
 And when the fifth trumpet sounded, we read that 
 " A star fell from heaven, and to him was given the key 
 of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless 
 pit ; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the 
 smoke of a great furnace ; and the sun and the air were 
 darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there 
 came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth : and 
 unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the 
 earth have power," &c. (Rev. ix. 1 12.) I showed that 
 this star falling from the firmament a star denoting
 
 512 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 rank in office was Mahomet, who was the descendant 
 of a royal but degraded house. He retired to a cave in 
 the neighbourhood of Mecca, where he concocted that 
 horrible scheme of delusion and blasphemy which has 
 overspread vast portions of Asia and of Europe ; which 
 depends for success on the scimetar of its preacher, and 
 on the sensuality of his auditory. We read that the 
 result of it was that the whole sky was darkened by this 
 moral smoke. The locusts, I showed you, by the 
 strange accompaniments by which they are characterized, 
 represent the Saracens rushing to the battle. " Their 
 shapes," we arc told, " were like unto horses prepared 
 unto battle ; and on their heads were as it were crowns 
 like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men ; and 
 they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were 
 as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates as it 
 were breastplates of iron ; and the sound of their wings 
 was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to 
 battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and 
 there were stings in their tails, and their power was to 
 hurt men five months." You may remember my explan- 
 ation of that. First, the star was Mahomet ; secondly, 
 the smoke was Mahometanism ; thirdly, the Apoca- 
 lyptic locusts are evidently symbols ; because, according 
 to natural history, the picture is most absurd ; accord- 
 ing to symbolic or hieroglyphic description, it is most 
 expressive. The locusts were, I showed you, the Sara- 
 cens, and the reason they are likened to locusts is, 
 the locusts come never singly but in swarms, and from 
 the east the Saracens burst in innumerable hordes 
 upon the length and breadth of Europe. They had 
 crowns upon their heads the Arab's aphorism says, 
 that " he has his turban for his crown." They had 
 " the faces of men." They were characterized by a 
 peculiarity no Roman had namely, the moustache worn 
 upon the upper lip, which gave them an appearance of 
 fierceness. They "had hair as the hair of women." 
 The Arabs were distinguished by their long flowing 
 hair. In addition to this, "the sound of their wings 
 was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to
 
 ABSTRACT OP LECTURES. 513 
 
 battle." Cavalry was their strength and main reliance. 
 " And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were 
 stings in their tails, and their power was to hurt men five 
 months." The expression "power" in the original is, 
 i^ovffia, which means " authority," the official authority 
 was theirs. The allusion to tails is thus explained. In 
 one of the earlier battles of the Saracens, the standard 
 was lost ; their leader instantly cut off his horse's tail, 
 placed it upon a pole, told his troops that must be their 
 standard when they marched to battle, and ever after- 
 wards, to this day, the horse's tail has been the Turkish 
 standard a Pacha with one, two, or three tails, denoting 
 the rank, office, or authority that he holds and their 
 actual hurting is in the history of their injustice and 
 oppression ; and I showed, by the most minute analysis, 
 that this trumpet contains the description of the spread 
 of Mahometanism and Saracen conquest as a judgment 
 upon an apostate and a God-denying Church. 
 
 The sixth trumpet sounds, which, as I proved, de- 
 scribes what was called in other portions of the Apo- 
 calypse, the Turkish woe. And there you remember 
 that the Turks passed the great river Euphrates, re- 
 ceived the permission from Him who alone had power 
 to give it, to come " forth for a day, a month, and a year, 
 and the number of the army of the horsemen was two 
 hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number 
 of them." I showed that this was fulfilled in the succes- 
 sive triumphs of the Turks who had received the Ma- 
 hometan delusion, and marched over great portions of 
 Asia and Europe, spreading havoc wherever they exhi- 
 bited their presence. I stated also, that the allusion 
 here made to smoke, and brimstone, and fire, might be 
 an allusion to the fact that for the first time, on a large 
 and gigantic scale, artillery was used at the siege of Con- 
 stantinople by the Turks, and gunpowder, though it was 
 invented several years before, then first came to be em- 
 ployed on a large scale, and to play a prominent part in 
 modern warfare. I showed that in that siege Constantino- 
 ple fell, and thus the mistress of the East was laid prostrate 
 upon the ruins of the mistress of the West the Apostacy 
 2 L
 
 514 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 reigned in the Christian Church Mahometanism over- 
 whelmed the eastern portion of Europe a world with- 
 out God men Avithout hope a Church without religion 
 and all things prognosticating some fearful catastrophe ; 
 so much so, that many of the Christians of that time 
 anticipated the speedy arrival of the judgment-day, and 
 the appearing of the great white throne. 
 
 Such, then, is a brief sketch of my exposition of the 
 Seven Seals and the Seven Trumpets. I know that many 
 of the statements I have made will appear to some of you 
 almost unwarranted, because some of you have not heard 
 the successive facts by which I have proved them ; but 
 I am now giving only a sketch, merely to refresh the 
 memories of those who have attended the delivery of 
 the whole, and not to carry conviction on the present 
 occasion. 
 
 The next great event we read of, is that glorious one, 
 the blessed Reformation. The Church had become apos- 
 tate destruction was its merit, reformation was God's 
 gracious purpose. I gave you a picture of the Church 
 before the Reformation the Pope worshipped as God 
 the Roman Church rampant and supreme kings pup- 
 pets in the hands of the Pope their diadems kicked from 
 their heads by his pontifical foot some of them deposed 
 from their thrones. And, I may here remark, I have 
 always felt this, that the danger of the Church of Christ, 
 if we may judge of the present and the future from the 
 past, is not the popular power, nor the kingly power, or, 
 as it is called by some, the Erastian power, but I solemnly 
 believe it to be from the priestly power ; little do I fear 
 from the people, nor do I fear much from the crown, but 
 I have much fear of the priest. Watch the priests and 
 the people and the crown, pray for all three, but protest 
 against the usurpations of any of them. 
 
 The Reformation then came, and Milner states that 
 " after ages of superstition, we see the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness rising over Europe with healing under his wings." 
 
 You may recollect the interesting sketch that I gave 
 of the Reformation. Leo X. was enjoying uninterrupted 
 and undisturbed supremacy, when a poor Augustinian
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 515 
 
 monk lays hold of a dusty volume which had not been 
 opened for centuries, in the library of the university of 
 Erfurt. Startled by its appearance, he unclasps it : the 
 unclasping of that book was the first act of the Reforma- 
 tion, and in that book lay all the privileges, the freedom, 
 the hopes, the blessings that you possess. If Martin 
 Luther, humanly speaking, had not unclasped that 
 volume, your grand philosophy, your great discoveries, 
 your steam engines, and your steam-boats, and your 
 electric telegraphs, and your railroads, would never have 
 existed. O scientific scorner, little dost thou know the 
 debt that thou owest to that poor Augustinian monk in 
 the convent of Erfurt ! When he perused the contents of 
 the Bible, he discovered in it truths that he had never 
 heard of before : he saw that the breviary and the missal 
 contained mere fragments of the Bible, and he read and 
 read again ; he discovered that glorious truth which 
 was the lever that lifted Europe from its thraldom, and 
 shook the very throne of the Pontiff, " we are justified 
 by faith alone in the glorious righteousness and finished 
 sacrifice of the Son of the living God." When he disco- 
 vered this, the hope of souls, he could not be silent he 
 began to speak out. The Pope tried to terrify him by 
 his decrees and to alarm him by his thunders : Luther 
 continued for some time doubting ; but at length he dis- 
 covered that the Pope was not Christ's minister, but 
 Antichrist, and that Popery was not the Church at all, 
 but the Apostacy. As soon as he was satisfied of this, 
 he feared no man's face, he cared for no man's frown, 
 he went like the cannon-shot through all opposition right 
 to his course, feeling that there was none to judge him 
 but God, and none could stop him when God had given 
 him his mission. The result of Martin Luther's appeal 
 was that all Europe shook, as if beneath the vibrations 
 of an earthquake Truth, long chained, burst its shackles 
 even the Vatican itself rung with strange and myste- 
 rious echoes, indicating that an unexpected visitor had 
 come into the midst of it, and reasoned in the Pontiffs 
 hearing " of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
 come." The echoes of that monk's voice reached Eng- 
 2 L 2
 
 516 ATOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 land, and sounded loud and long amid the convents 
 monasteries of Scotland, till, at last, the sentiment he 
 uttered in a corner became the confession of Europe, and 
 truth, planted as a living seed by that monk, grew, 
 sometimes watered by the blood of martyrs, until it shot 
 up into those glorious trees which overspread England, 
 Scotland, and Germany, and mighty sections of America, 
 beneath which the nations find shelter, and Christians 
 food that is sweet and pleasant to their taste. Deeply 
 are we indebted to Luther : we regret the faults with 
 which he was chargeable as a man, but we bless God for 
 the excellence by which he was distinguished as a saint ; 
 and that Church, or rather that section of a Church, 
 which denounces, in the language of one, Luther and 
 Jewell as " irreverent dissenters," and that proclaims the 
 Reformation, in the language of another, to be like " a 
 limb badly set and which needs to be broken again," and 
 to be a calamity, a curse rather than a blessing, has lost 
 its first love, and has need to do the work of repentance, 
 and arise and go to her Father, and ask forgiveness for 
 the past and grace for the future. 
 
 After describing the Reformation, you will recollect I 
 gave you a sketch of the two witnesses ; which I ex- 
 plained to be a retrospective sketch of the Church of 
 Christ during the dominion of the Apostacy, beginning 
 with the time when the sealing vision took place, and 
 terminating only with the Reformation. I mentioned 
 that they were two, because fewer than two witnesses do 
 not constitute a valid testimony, and two to denote that 
 the people of God would be reduced to the lowest possi- 
 ble ebb in the course of a dominant and supreme Apos- 
 tacy. The two witnesses I traced first in the Eastern 
 line, through those called the Paulicians ; next in the 
 Western line, through Augustine, Vigilantius, Claude of 
 Turin, Agobard, Peter Waldo, until both lines met in 
 the Waldenses, and merged in the glories of the Reform- 
 ation itself. You recollect also how I explained the 
 slaughter of the witnesses. I showed that because the 
 witnesses were symbolic persons, their death must be 
 symbolic, and their resurrection must be symbolic also. I
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 517 
 
 showed you that in the year 1513, the last Council of 
 Lateran met in the broad or prominent place of Chris- 
 tendom, namely, in the Lateran at Rome. I showed you 
 that they issued a summons to all the heretics, Bohe- 
 mians, Waldenses, and Wickliffites, to appear in the 
 Council in the next year, on the 5th of May, 1514, and 
 there defend themselves or submit to the Church. I 
 showed you, by the testimony of historians of the Chris- 
 tian Church, that they, the Protestants or witnesses, were 
 all but extinct, and when the summons was issued, not 
 one responded. Now it is a remarkable fact, that the 
 "heretics," i. e. true Christians, were never, but on this 
 one occasion, summoned to a Council at which they did 
 not appear. Luther appeared when summoned, both at 
 Worms and at Spires ; Huss appeared at Constance ; arid 
 so with others ; but at this Council no appearance was 
 made. On May 5, 1514, the Council met. It was asked, 
 "were the heretics present, personally or by deputy?" 
 All was silent, and the orator of the Council mounted the 
 pulpit, and amidst the plaudits of all present, pronounced 
 the words, "Nemo reclamat ; nullus obsistit" "There 
 is not one that makes opposition, or that manifests any 
 protest against us." And, instantly, it is added, when 
 the witnesses were slain, " they of the nations" and I 
 pointed out the fact that the idea of representation is 
 conveyed in the original the representatives of the na- 
 tions sitting in the Council, celebrated feasts, sent pre- 
 sents to each other, and congratulated themselves that 
 the witnesses were slain they flattered themselves that 
 heresy was extinct, and the Church triumphant. 
 
 The witnesses, we are told, were to lie unburied for 
 three and a half prophetic days, i. e. for three and a 
 half literal years. Now from May 5, 1514, to October 
 31, 1517, is precisely three years and a half: did any 
 thing take place about the end of that period which 
 would answer to the resurrection of the witnesses ? On 
 that very day, October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted 
 his ninety-five theses on the gates of the great church of 
 Wittemberg ; in which he asserted Protestant truth, and 
 protested against Popish error : that was the first sound
 
 518 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 of the Reformation. The resuscitated witnesses now 
 rose from the tomb, ascended in the sky, were prosperous, 
 and dominant, and great, in the presence of all the nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 I then illustrated the same Church of Christ in the 
 Apocalyptic symbol, called the woman in the wilderness. 
 I explained that the woman was another symbol em- 
 ployed to denote the true Church of Christ during the 
 almost universal prevalence of the Apostacy, having fled 
 into the wilderness, there to be concealed for 1260 years. 
 I showed that both these symbols were meant to impress 
 upon us the nature of Christ's true Church : it is com- 
 pared to " the woman in the wilderness," or to " the wit- 
 nesses in sackcloth," to denote that the true Church is 
 not the magnificent thing that charms the sense, but the 
 spiritual and moral thing that is only to be spiritually 
 and morally discerned. 
 
 After describing this I showed you that the wild 
 beast from the abyss, delineated in chap, xiii., and charac- 
 terized by attributes so clear and unequivocal, that if it 
 were described in the page of history, the Pope of Rome 
 would instantly present himself to the mind of any 
 person, as the individual intended to be represented by 
 these symbols. I pointed out that the Church of Rome 
 has been characterized by apostacy from the truth, and 
 that it has been literally " drunk with the blood of 
 saints," and has persecuted and proscribed the children 
 of God in every country and in every age. It is the 
 same as the little horn of Daniel, the seer that had eyes 
 and saw ; it is the same with the man of sin of St. Paul, 
 in 2 Thess. ; it is a graphic description of him whose 
 tyranny and ambition have been his most dominant cha- 
 racteristics, and whose sanguinary cruelty has been his 
 greatest and most branding sin. Then I showed you 
 what the other wild beast was that was like unto the 
 first. This I showed to be the Papal clergy, the Jesuits, 
 the janissaries of the Pope a body perfectly distinct 
 from the Pope consolidated by celibacy into one power- 
 ful organization, having nothing that unites them to the 
 world, but all that unites them to the Church having
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 519 
 
 no circles of their own to distract them in their homes 
 only one great object to contend and to struggle for, the 
 supremacy of the Pope and of the Church of which he 
 is the ruler. 
 
 I showed you next that the image of the beast was 
 the General Councils formed of the collected cardinals, 
 bishops, and clergy of the Church of Rome the repre- 
 sentatives of the Pope : and the word here used, viz. 
 eiKwt', is applied to a General Council by writers. I also 
 defined the wild beast by one remarkable feature ; it is 
 stated, " his number is the number of a man," and that 
 number is said to be 666. I explained that the Greeks 
 and Romans had no numerals, as we have, but they de- 
 noted their numerals by the letters of their alphabet 
 a, one, /3, two, y, three, and so on ; then a point over 
 any letter makes 10. Thus if you take the Greek let- 
 ters that make up 666, and put them together, they 
 form X, a, r, e, t, v, o, c. XarfO'oe, and there is no other 
 word corresponding to it. There are many words that 
 are an approximation to it, but there are plain reasons 
 for rejecting them, and the most powerful reasons for 
 believing that this word, Xaretvoe, is the true word here 
 intended. The Church of Rome is marked by Latin 
 canons, Latin missal, Latin breviary, Latin Bible 
 Latin bulls, encyclicals, decrees, canons ; it is empha- 
 tically the Latin Church the Man of Sin the Anti- 
 christ the wild beast from the abyss. 
 
 After having given you a description of the great cha- 
 racteristics of this Church, I proceeded to give you an 
 exposition of the Seven Vials. The first vial, we find, 
 was poured out, by the angel commissioned to do so, 
 upon the Roman earth ; the result of its effusion we read 
 in chap. xvi. ; " There fell a noisome and grievous sore 
 upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and 
 upon them which worshipped his image." I showed 
 you that that sore was that dreadful scourge the French 
 Revolution, and that those who had so martyred the 
 saints then felt in their turn that they that throw the 
 arrow of persecution, always receive it again, sooner or 
 later, into their own bosoms. This sore fell upon the
 
 ,520 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 capital of the earth, the eldest daughter of the Church, 
 and the scene that accompanied its pouring out I need 
 not recapitulate. 
 
 The second vial was poured out upon the sea ; and 
 just as we explained "the burning mountain" falling 
 into the sea to mean the destruction of the maritime and 
 naval powers of Rome, so must we consistently explain 
 the pouring out of this vial upon the sea. What then 
 took place ? We read, that immediately after the great 
 outburst of the French Revolution, all the naval forces 
 and fleets that France could muster against our country, 
 as her only hope of destroying us, were swept from the 
 sea in rapid succession. Her islands and colonies St. 
 Domingo and others became the scenes of servile and 
 terrible warfare : the French on this occasion exhibited 
 a very strange peculiarity of human nature ; they pro- 
 claimed at their Revolution, equality of all the members 
 of the whole human family ; the blacks in St. Domingo, 
 their most powerful colony, caught the sentiment, and 
 believed it too ; and they proclaimed equality for all. 
 But it seems that the French meant, when they pro- 
 claimed liberty and equality for all, for those only whose 
 faces were bleached by a northern climate, for they ex- 
 cluded all those whose countenances had the least tinge 
 of a southern sun. This is just the feature that some of 
 our American brethren in the southern States exhibit at 
 the present day. There the black man is not permitted 
 to travel in the same coach, or the same steam-boat, or 
 railway carriage, with the white man, nor even to ap- 
 proach the same communion table, where one would 
 suppose all distinctions of caste were utterly annihilated, 
 as if Christ died for the white and not for the black. 
 Shame upon those ministers of the gospel, then, who 
 know it, and do not protest against it ; and still more so 
 on those who sanction it because it supports them. I 
 think, by the grace of God, if I were there, I should 
 show the greater preference to the black men rather 
 than to the white, upon that beautiful principle of the 
 gospel, that the weakest ought to be first supported. 
 The very first effect of the action of this second vial
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 521 
 
 was, that all the colonies of France were lost to her, 
 and her navies annihilated. The victories of the Nile, 
 Cape St. Vincent, and Trafalgar, and many others, the 
 most splendid in any country's annals upon earth, 
 were gained by our own country, to whom seems to 
 have been intrusted the dread mission of pouring out 
 this vial. It would occupy too much of your time were 
 I in this syllabus to recount all the brilliant triumphs of 
 our country on the ocean, or the names of that cluster 
 of illustrious admirals who appeared about this time 
 men whose appearance on the ocean was the prelude of 
 victory to our arms, and the signal of confidence to our 
 sailors. Napoleon cried out, "Let me have ships and 
 a navy, and perfidious Albion will be crushed : " but no 
 sooner had he obtained them than they were burned in 
 the harbour or blown from the deep. The reason of 
 this was not that we had braver seamen, or greater he- 
 roism, but that God had pronounced the doom on the 
 guilty nation, and all the power and bravery of France, 
 sustained by the consummate skill of Napoleon, could 
 not avert it. 
 
 The third vial, we read, was poured out upon the 
 rivers ; and, accordingly, we have in history the evidence 
 of the fearful scenes of bloodshed which soon took 
 place upon the banks of the Rhine, the Danube, and 
 all the great rivers of continental Europe : in fact, there 
 was not a capital, from Moscow to Madrid, from St. 
 Petersburg to Paris, that was not blazing beneath the 
 flames of the French invasion ; nor a city on the 
 Danube, the Rhine, or the Po that did not give evidence 
 of the action of some terrible judgment upon the earth. 
 
 The fourth vial was poured out upon the sun. I told 
 you that the sun denotes, in Apocalyptic symbols, as 
 I have explained before, the kingly power. Here, then, 
 the sun is said to scorch the nations of the earth. This 
 has been explained by Mr. Elliott, and I think justly, 
 to be the power given to that imperial sun, Napoleon, to 
 scorch, that is, severely punish the nations of the earth, 
 in just and righteous retribution. It is surely allusive 
 to the manner of his doing so, since we read that he
 
 522 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 was called by his own soldiers "the little sun;" his 
 battles were signalized by the rolling fire of musketry 
 and artillery, which last he brought into the field to an 
 extent unprecedented in the history of European war- 
 fare, and upon this he depended so much, that he called 
 artillery his " right arm." He may justly be said to 
 have scorched the nations of the earth, literally and figu- 
 ratively too. * Having done his work he passed from the 
 stage, for Napoleon had his mission, and when he had 
 done it, he was swept away in order to make room for 
 other agencies. His rise, his empire, and his retreat, are 
 alike supernatural. 
 
 The fifth vial was poured out upon the throne of the 
 beast. I showed in a previous lecture, that this wild 
 beast is the symbol of the Pope : is there, then, co- 
 incident with this symbol in prophecy, a fact in history 
 which shows that the Papal power, in its central seat, 
 was visited about this time with any signal and over- 
 whelming judgments? We read in every history that 
 the marshals of Napoleon appeared in the midst of the 
 sacerdotal capital burst upon the Pope and his cardinals 
 took the ring, that indicated his marriage with the 
 Church, from the Pope's finger marched him to Paris 
 a humble prisoner ; and thus he, who had awed the 
 nations by his word, was dragged at the chariot-wheels 
 of Napoleon, introduced at the ceremony of the corona- 
 tion of the Emperor, not to crown, but to grace the 
 coronation, as a puppet at the spectacle ; for Napoleon 
 placed the crown on his own head, while the Pope stood 
 by to gild the scene, but not to perform the ceremony. 
 How truly was the prediction fulfilled that this vial 
 should be poured out upon the throne of the beast ! 
 
 We now turn to the sixth vial, under the last dregs 
 of which we now are. Under it the premonitory symp- 
 toms of the approach of Him who is to reign for ever 
 develope themselves. Under this vial the river Euphrates 
 was to be dried. I showed you, in a previous lecture, 
 that the Euphrates was the symbol of the Turkish 
 power: what has been the fact? From 1820 down to 
 the present time, Turkey has been wasting the crescent
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 523 
 
 waning. The Janissaries, its powerful police, are ex- 
 tinct ; the head of the empire is adopting European 
 customs ; laws that were peculiar distinctions of Ma- 
 hometanism are repealed, and, in the language of 
 Chateaubriand, " Turkey is dying for want of Turks." 
 And, in the course of a very few years more, the 
 last streams in the channels of the Euphrates will be 
 exhausted, and Turkey, the great oppressor of the 
 Church in the days that are past, will be no longer a 
 reality among the nations. Then the drying up of the 
 river was to make preparation for the return of the kings 
 of the east. The kings of the east, I showed you, are 
 the Jewish people, and that, contemporaneous with the 
 wasting of the Turkish power, there should be the rise 
 of an interest in the Jewish race ; and when the Turkish 
 power is utterly exhausted, the Jews should be illumi- 
 nated with a Divine light, march in columns to the land 
 of their fathers, and, in the midst of Jerusalem, praise 
 with hosannas Him whom their fathers crucified. And 
 such an interest is actually taken in their destiny at the 
 present day : Sweden is agitated about the position of 
 the Jews in that country : the King of Prussia is in 
 difficulty about the same thing. That despised, perse- 
 cuted, money-loving race, is about to occupy a new and 
 more prominent position in the affairs of Europe. In 
 our own country, is it not one of the great topics of the 
 day ? I pronounce not here whether it be politically 
 right or politically wrong, but when I read the speeches 
 of Lord John Russell and Lord Ashley in the House 
 of Commons, the former in support of the measure, and 
 the latter in opposition to it, I was struck by the deep 
 and solemn sense of responsibility that seemed to be 
 felt by both those statesmen, and the impression rushed 
 upon my mind, Prime Ministers and Members of 
 Parliament may, as they conscientiously desire, pursue 
 their own plans, and seek the accomplishment of their 
 own ends, but they are but instruments in the hands 
 of God, working out his glorious will his predicted 
 purpose. 
 
 I noticed, also, the three unclean spirits that go out,
 
 524 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 under this vial, to deceive the nations of the earth. I 
 showed that the first was Infidelity : and, remember, I 
 am now only stating results, not giving you the data : 
 I showed that the first is Infidelity, consisting in the 
 absence of religion ; and next, in antagonism to religion. 
 I showed that the second unclean spirit from the mouth 
 of the beast, was Popery : I need not here recapitulate 
 the evidence of its remarkable presence among us. Some 
 fifty years ago there were only fifteen or twenty Roman 
 Catholic chapels in England ; now there are about 700. 
 In,the course of six years they have built 60 churches, 
 several of which are cathedrals, all are as large, some 
 larger, than the largest parish churches in this country ; 
 they have between 800 and 900 priests labouring 
 throughout the country ; nay, more, there is not a place 
 of any importance in which there is not some Jesuit 
 labouring with untiring energy unwearied zeal and 
 unequalled cunning for the supremacy of his Church. 
 Then I showed you that the third unclean spirit is 
 Tractarianism, as distinguished from Popery ; in other 
 words, Popery without a Pope ; all the venom of the 
 original without its consistency and fulness of develop- 
 ment. I have seen much of this system in recent 
 instances, and it has made me feel more than ever that 
 the priestly power is the main element that we have to 
 dread. The Dissenter says, whether truly or not I need 
 not now pronounce, that the Church ought to be totally 
 separate from the State, and to be in no degree within the 
 reach of Crcsar's touch. The Churchman says, rightly or 
 wrongly I do not now determine, but most consistently, 
 that the Church and State should be united to one 
 another, and live in good friendship and happy brother- 
 hood : but the Puseyite does not adopt the sentiments of 
 either ; he says that the State must obey the Church ; 
 the priest must be the ruler, the prince must be the sub- 
 ject. I say the priestly power is the element we have 
 to dread the element which makes gigantic progress, 
 and aims at unmitigated supremacy. 
 
 We came, last Sunday evening, to the opening of the 
 seventh vial, which is the grand consummation of those
 
 ABSTRACT OP LECTURES. 525 
 
 prophecies that bud every hour into performance. Under 
 it, I believe, Christ comes. Now, I do believe that 
 Christ's advent is not post-millennial, but pre-millennial. 
 I believe there will not be a Millennium till Christ 
 come ; I believe that when He comes there will take 
 place two resurrections, the one only of the just, the 
 other only of the wicked. Need I remind you of what 
 St. Paul says, " if by any means I may attain unto the 
 resurrection" CK r&v reKpwv, "from among the dead." 
 And our Lord speaks of the resurrection of the just in 
 particular : and St. Paul speaks plainly, " the dead in 
 Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and re- 
 main shall be caught up together with him in the air." 
 My dear friends, when Christ comes, what a startling 
 spectacle will the world present ! Every grave that con- 
 tains a dead saint shall rend, while every grave that 
 contains the ashes of the lost remains unagitated. In 
 every churchyard one grave will open, and its dead, 
 quickened by an impulse from on high, will rise and 
 meet the Lord in the air ; but the grave that is next to 
 it shall remain still unchanged as it was before, and un- 
 moved by what has taken place beside it. So in a family, 
 one person shall be snatched away, it may be at mid- 
 night, and rise to meet the Lord in his resurrection-body, 
 and another shall be left. The mother shall remain, the 
 child shall rise ; or the son shall remain, and the mother 
 shall be taken away. And then, when all Christ's dead 
 saints are quickened and risen, and all Christ's living 
 saints have joined them, this globe, as I explained to 
 you from 1 Pet. iii. 10, this earth which is stored with 
 fire for it is very remarkable that the last geological 
 discoveries prove the earth upon which we tread to be a 
 mere crust, the interior of which is full of liquid fire, 
 and for every one hundred feet that you go down into 
 the earth the thermometer rises one degree will split 
 into a thousand crevices, from which those flames will 
 burst, and the atmosphere which surrounds it, and is 
 composed of gasses that are igneous, will ignite and wrap 
 it in a shroud of flame, and the earth, thus purified, will
 
 526 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 be the holy and the happy spot on which the saints shall 
 dwell and praise and magnify the Lord. 
 
 The seventh vial, we are told, will be poured out upon 
 the air : I showed you, last Sunday evening, the proofs 
 and evidences of its action ; and I also stated that, whilst 
 there was its moral meaning in this, there was also a 
 literal fulfilment of it. And what do we see taking place 
 all around us ? Look at' the potato blight which took 
 place two years ago ; after all that has been written upon 
 the subject, it has not yet been explained : look at the 
 rapid progress of the influenza ; all admit that it is not 
 contagious, yet it breaks out in one family and goes on 
 to another family : and see the cholera next threatens us 
 with its ravages ; it is proved that it is not contagious, 
 yet it breaks out in city after city, and country after 
 country ; sanitary improvements, however right and how- 
 ever necessary, cannot absolutely prevent it. What is 
 the explanation of all this ? Look at our commercial 
 difficulties our perplexed merchants our political dis- 
 locations and chartist excitements all admit that they 
 are puzzled for the explanation of these things. I can 
 explain it to you. The angel is pouring out his vial 
 upon the air the sprinklings are on the pen, the plough, 
 the shuttle, on continent and island and sea. Our com- 
 merce, and our agriculture, and our manufactures, and 
 all in which AVC glory feel its blighting dews, and give 
 token of feeling it more severely and that speedily. 
 " Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments," 
 for, " behold, I come as a thief."* 
 
 If time would only have allowed me, I would have de- 
 duced several lessons from all that I have now been 
 stating, which I think of great practical value : but I 
 have really drawn so much upon your patience already 
 that I must close, and I only regret that the time for 
 my continuing these Lectures has passed away : the his- 
 torical illustrations I will not pursue further, but the 
 
 * The earthquake of the seventh vial began in February, 1848, 
 at Paris, the centre of Europe. Watch and wait ; we are now 
 plainly under the seventh vial.
 
 ABSTRACT OF LECTURES. 527 
 
 beautiful and spiritual passages contained in the rest of 
 the Apocalypse, I shall explain to my own people in my 
 own church on successive Sunday evenings.* 
 
 We live in years into each of which is crowded the 
 work of centuries. A day brings forth now more than 
 a century brought forth in former times. Time rushes 
 more rapidly as it nears its final fall. The future ap- 
 proaches us like a rising tide, and destinies solemn as 
 the soul, heaven, and hell stretch out before us. Are we 
 not called on to ascertain clearly our relative position ? 
 What matters it that a Millennium comes if we shall have 
 no share in it ? What avails it that its music shall be so 
 sweet, its air so holy, and its people so happy, and its 
 translucency with glory so bright, if we shall have no 
 part in it ? There remaineth indeed a rest but it is 
 for the people of God. Is this our class ? Do we belong 
 to that consecrated family ? Are we Christ's ? This is 
 the question of questions. Our whole interest is com- 
 pressed in this. O leave it not unsolved and unsettled. 
 " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
 saved." " Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be 
 ye saved." " Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away 
 the sins of the world." " Lord Jesus, to whom can we 
 go but unto thee; thou hast the words of everlasting 
 life." 
 
 Let me ask, therefore, when Christ shall come upon 
 the lightning's wing or upon the eddying air, at mid- 
 night or at midday, if you feel that you are prepared to 
 meet him ? to welcome him ? to reign with him ? He 
 may come next year, or in five, or in ten, or in twenty 
 years, I cannot say. It will be at an hour when ye think 
 not. Near, however, his advent is all chronology, and 
 prophecy, and history prove it it is time, therefore, that 
 we should set our house in order, and have our loins 
 
 * The second series of Apocalyptic Sketches has been pub- 
 lished. These contain the Apocalyptic sketches of Millennial 
 blessedness, and I trust will prove as interesting to the people of 
 God as these, which were so much appreciated, and more appre- 
 ciated than they deserved, in Exeter Hall.
 
 ,528 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. 
 
 girt, and our lamps burning. Were I told that the end of 
 this dispensation would come to-morrow, I would not say 
 to the tradesman, leave your shop or to the statesman, 
 leave your cabinet or to the lawyer, abandon your desk 
 or to the soldier, your sword ; but I would say to each 
 and all, sit loose to all that is worldly ; mingle not your 
 affections with its transitory elements, let your hand be 
 here, but let your heart be in heaven ; let your treasure 
 be beyond the skies, and your hope in glory. Like the 
 eagle, touch the earth only to eat and sleep, and rise 
 again as quickly as possible, and soar perpetually towards 
 brighter realms, riveting your eye on a yet more glorious 
 Sun. There is no obstruction to the upward flight of 
 him who has Christ, the pass-word of the universe. All 
 things shall aid you, for God is with you ; and when the 
 gray wing of time shall have winnowed away things now 
 seen your eye, purified and strengthened, will gaze upon 
 a universe clear with light and pure with Deity, no more 
 to wane in age or woe the Sabbath of the world's long 
 week the reign of the Church's long absent Lord. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST SERIES.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABEL, 258. 
 
 Abraham, 84. 
 
 Abyss, meaning of, ib. 
 
 Adoption through Christ, 27. 
 
 Adrian, 41. 
 
 Agobard, 261. 
 
 Alan de la Roche, 1 15. 
 
 Alaric the Goth, 71. 
 
 incursion of, ib. 
 
 inauguration of, ib. 
 
 progress of, ib. 
 
 reaches Rome, ib. 
 
 passage of Rhine, ib. 
 
 mission and death of, 72. 
 
 his burial, ib. 
 
 Albigeois, 214. 
 
 Alcuin, extract from his works, 
 180, 181. 
 
 Alhambra, 88. 
 
 Angels, restraining, 10] . 
 
 their commission, ib. 
 
 Antc-Nicene Christians, 68. 
 
 Antichrist, 75, 69, 68. 
 
 meaning of, 75. 
 
 name assumed, 76. 
 
 description of, ib. 
 
 John the Faster, 75. 
 
 Pope held to be, by Re- 
 formers, 149. 
 
 Antonines, 41. 
 
 APOCALYPSE, meaning of, 3. 
 
 study of, 7. 
 
 and Reformers, 8. 
 
 gospel of, 9, 20. 
 
 style of, 9. 
 
 chronology of, ib. 
 
 and Church of Rome, 10. 
 
 interpreters of, 15. 
 
 the Futurists, 16. 
 
 Apocalypse, and caution, 16. 
 
 allusive character of, 209. 
 
 Apocrypha, meaning of, 3. 
 Apostacy, 285. 
 
 Rome held to be, by Re- 
 formers, 149. 
 
 description of, 285. 
 
 Apostolical church, 243. 
 
 contrasted with apostate 
 
 church, 244. 
 
 succession, 171. 
 
 Arabs, character of, 83. 
 
 description of, 84. 
 
 Arian Goths, 229. 
 
 invaded Rome, ib. 
 
 renounced their Arianism, 
 
 230. 
 
 embraced Trinitarianism, 
 
 ib. 
 
 Arianism, 226. 
 
 denounced by Council of 
 
 Nice, 225. 
 
 sanctioned by Council of 
 
 Seleucia, 226. 
 
 its approximation to infi- 
 delity, ib. 
 
 denounced as the woe, ib. 
 
 opposed by Theodosius the 
 
 Great, 228. 
 
 expulsion of Arians by 
 
 Theodosius the Great, ib. 
 
 adopted by Vandals, Visi- 
 goths, and Huns, 229. 
 
 Arius, 224. 
 
 his principles, 225. 
 
 a Socinian, ib. 
 
 founder of Arianism, ib. 
 
 his doctrine received by 
 
 church, ib. 
 
 2 it
 
 530 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ascending to heaven, 199. 
 
 figurative meaning of, 
 
 200. 
 
 Association, young men's, 155. 
 Athanasius, 259. 
 Atonement of Christ, 25. 
 Attila, date of, 73. 
 
 scourge of God, ib. 
 
 Augustine, 259, 57, 69. 
 
 Babylon, 435. 
 
 fall of, predicted, 436. 
 
 Balance, import of, 118. 
 
 Baptism, Cyril on, 53. 
 
 Bartholomew (St.) day, 314. 
 
 massacre of, ib. 
 
 medal struck in comme- 
 moration of, 345. 
 
 Beast from the sea, 279. 
 
 description of, ib. 
 
 seven heads of, 280. 
 
 identical with beast from 
 
 abyss, 281. 
 
 points of coincidence be- 
 tween 13th and 17th chapters 
 of Revelation, 280. 
 
 ten kingdoms extirpated 
 
 by, 281. 
 
 its head, 285. 
 
 its body, ib. 
 
 the second,or two horned, ib. 
 
 seven heads of, figure 
 
 Rome's seven hills, 286. 
 
 seven heads also figure se- 
 ven classes or lines of supreme 
 governors, 287. 
 
 eighth head identical with 
 
 the Pope, ib. 
 
 seventh and eighth heads 
 
 of, opinion of Mr. Elliott, 288. 
 
 seventh head wounded to 
 
 death by Christian emperors, 
 290. 
 
 remarks of Gibbon on, ib. 
 
 ten horns of, ten kingdoms 
 
 that rose under the patronage 
 of Roman pontiffs, 293. 
 
 Beast, eighth head of, realized in 
 
 the Popes, 299. 
 the second, or two horned, 
 
 like a lamb, the Romish cler- 
 
 gy, 320. 
 
 number of, 325. 
 
 its stigma, derived from 
 
 slaves, soldiers, and devo- 
 tees, ib. 
 
 Benevolence, 238. 
 
 as the world judges, ib. 
 
 as judged of by God, ib. 
 
 Beranger, 183. 
 
 Bible, 158. 
 
 reading of, prohibited, 160. 
 
 a sealed book prior to the 
 
 Reformation, 158. 
 
 the Christian's rule of faith, 
 
 161. 
 
 the value of, ib. 
 
 the standard of freedom, 
 
 166. 
 
 neglect of, 167. 
 
 condemned by Council of 
 
 Toulouse, 158. 
 
 by Council of Con- 
 stance, 159. 
 reading of, restricted by 
 
 Council of Trent, ib. 
 
 condemned by Gerson, ib. 
 
 by James of Arragon, 
 
 158. 
 by Alexander III., 
 
 159. 
 
 by Clement XI. , ib. 
 
 by Pius IX., 159, 
 
 160. 
 Societies condemned by 
 
 Pope, 378. 
 translation of, cursed by 
 
 Pius VII., ib. 
 circulation of, condemned 
 
 by Pius IX., ib. 
 Bohemians, 214. 
 Bonaventure, 111. 
 
 Psalter of, ib. 
 
 blasphemy of, 111113. 
 
 specimen of Psalter of, 
 
 111. 
 Britain, 202.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 531 
 
 Britain, a part of the Roman em- 
 pire, 202. 
 
 - its separation from the 
 Popedom, ib. 
 
 Csesarius of Aries, 179. 
 
 Calvin, 261. 
 
 Candlesticks, two witnesses as, 
 174. 
 
 literal translation of, ib. 
 
 Apocalyptic meaning of, ib. 
 
 Cathari, 214. 
 
 Cathedrals, 108. 
 
 how built originally, 109. 
 
 Chalmers, Thos., 262. 
 
 eulogy upon, ib. 
 
 talents of, 263. 
 
 mode of address of, 264. 
 
 a geologist, ib. 
 
 an astronomer, ib. 
 
 a mathematician, 265. 
 
 death of, ib. 
 
 Chiliads, seven, 205. 
 
 Christ a King, 22. 
 
 a Priest, ib. 
 
 a Mediator, 114. 
 
 Sun of righteousness, 119. 
 
 Lion of Judah, ib. 
 
 expiation of, 24. 
 
 the lamb slain, 38. 
 
 the door, 47. 
 
 Christ's second advent pre-mil- 
 lennial, 450. 
 
 the, revealed, 4. 
 
 blood, its personal applica- 
 tion, 59. 
 
 its unchanging effi- 
 cacy, 63. 
 
 Christianity, its progress, 77. 
 
 its safety and success, ib. 
 
 its influence, ib. 
 
 its universality, ib. 
 
 the bulwark of England, 80. 
 
 its enemies, 78. 
 
 its subjects, 79. 
 
 its triumphs, 80. 
 
 sanctifies, 128. 
 
 Christianity, characteristics of, 
 
 21. 
 
 Christians, 238. 
 sacrifices of, 27. 
 
 - character of, 238, 18, 29. 
 who are ? 239. 
 
 what are ? 240. 
 
 happiness of, ib., 275. 
 follow Christ in his suffer- 
 
 ings, 256. 
 
 in his joys, ib. 
 
 with the heart, ib. 
 openly, fully, and 
 
 constantly, ib. 
 Chrysostom, 260. 
 Church, Christian, 222. 
 
 rising of, ib. 
 
 elevation of, ib. 
 
 gratitude of, 223. 
 
 Eusebius on, ib. 
 
 brightness of, ib. 
 
 appearance of Arian heresy 
 
 in, 224. 
 
 Church, Jewish, 34. 
 Church in the wilderness, 215. 
 
 foundation of, 231. 
 
 Christ present with, 232. 
 
 promise given to, 233. 
 
 visibility of, ib. 
 
 jewels of, hidden, 23 1. 
 
 Church of Christ, 
 
 firm foundation of, 95. 
 
 how traced in middle ages, 
 
 214. 
 
 not always visible to the 
 
 world, 230. 
 
 great Builder of, 231. 
 
 Church of Rome, 344, 112. 
 
 its principles, 344. 
 
 idolatry of worship, 113. 
 
 blasphemy of, ib. 
 
 immorality of, ib. 
 
 saints of, ib. 
 
 auricular confession in, ib. 
 
 ready for all chances, 159. 
 
 Church, true, 164. 
 
 preaches justification by 
 
 faith, ib. 
 
 firmness of foundation of, 
 
 ib.
 
 532 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Church, true, during the effusion 
 
 of the vials, 442. 
 City, tenth part of, fell, 202. 
 City, described in Rev. xvii., 189. 
 
 those -who were in the, ib. 
 
 representatives in the, ib. 
 
 Clarkson, 262. 
 
 Claude of Turin, 260. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 269. 
 
 Clergy, Papal, 320. 
 
 -with horns as lambs, speak 
 
 as dragons, ib. 
 exercise Pope's authority, 
 
 321. 
 
 miracles of, 322. 
 
 transubstantiation and, ib. 
 
 Cloud, import of. 118. 
 Constantine, 50. 
 
 and the Church, 51, 52. 
 
 and Christianity, 51. 
 
 era of, 52, 71. 
 
 of Armenia, 182. 
 
 Constantinople, 101. 
 
 mistress of the East, ib. 
 
 siege of, 103. 
 
 weapons employed at siege 
 
 of, ib. 
 
 Gibbon on siege of, 104. 
 
 its fall, ib. 
 
 Council of Frankfort, 180. 
 protest against image wor- 
 ship, ib. 
 Council of Nice, 2nd, 110. 
 
 date of, ib. 
 
 idolatry sanctioned by, ib. 
 
 Council of Trent, 200. 
 Cranmer, 206. 
 
 his education, 207. 
 
 sanctioned the burning of 
 
 two Anabaptists, 206. 
 Crown symbol of conquering 
 
 king, 104. 
 Crusades, their object, 102. 
 
 their instigator, ib. 
 
 against Waldenses, 187. 
 
 Cyril on baptism, 63. 
 
 D 
 
 Dagmonolatry, 111. 
 
 Daniel and the Apocalypse, 282. 
 
 Demons, 1 10. 
 
 Destruction of cathedrals, 204. 
 
 Devil, meaning of, 110. 
 
 Diadem, symbol of peaceful 
 king, 104. 
 
 Door in heaven, 33. 
 
 Dragon, 217. 
 
 symbol of, ib. 
 
 cast out of his mouth wa- 
 ters, 229. 
 
 not Satan in his personal 
 
 character, 219. 
 
 appearance of, ib. 
 
 seven heads of, ib. 
 
 ten horns of. ib. 
 
 used as a Roman standard, 
 
 220 
 
 lost his power, 222. 
 
 E 
 
 Eagle, the great, 228. 
 Earthquake, 45, 201, 426. 
 
 figurative meaning of, 45. 
 
 apocalyptic meaning of, 
 
 201. 
 affects Saxony, Prussia, 
 
 Sweden, and Denmark, ib. 
 felt by the Netherlands, 
 
 205. 
 
 Roman empire 
 kingdoms, 202. 
 
 Britain, one of the 
 
 its ten 
 
 ten, 
 
 separates from the popedom, 
 ib. 
 
 tenth of city fell, ib. 
 
 tripartite division arising 
 
 from, 426. 
 
 Edward VI., 203. 
 
 Election, 246. 
 
 a true doctrine, ib. 
 
 not to be rejected, ib. 
 
 texts to prove, 248. 
 
 and responsibility, 246.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 533 
 
 Election, difficult to be recon- 
 ciled, 247. 
 
 Elizabeth, queen, 210. 
 defeat of Spanish armada 
 
 by, ib. 
 
 gave God the glory, ib. 
 
 medals struck by, ib. 
 
 the maiden queen, 211. 
 
 her national thanksgiving, 
 
 ib. 
 
 her efforts for the Reform- 
 ation, 203. 
 Emperors, 288. 
 laurel crown and diadem, 
 
 ib. 
 
 name, continuance of, ib. 
 
 office of, changed, ib. 
 
 Roman, 41. 
 
 ' Nerva, ib. 
 
 Trajan, ib. 
 
 Adrian, ib. 
 
 two Antonines, ib. 
 
 Domitian, ib. 
 
 Commodus, ib. 
 
 Epiphany of Jesus, 5. 
 Era of the martyrs, 44. 
 
 of Constantine, 5271. 
 
 Euphrates, river, 382. 
 
 drying of, a sign of the 
 
 times, 384. 
 denotes Turkish power. 
 
 382. 
 
 drying up of, 383. 
 
 commencement of drying 
 
 up, ib. 
 causes which operated to 
 
 the drying up of, 384388. 
 Eusebius, 11, 52. 
 his glowing anticipations of 
 
 the future on Constantine's 
 
 establishment of Christianity. 
 
 52. 
 Expiation of Christ, 24. 
 
 Faith, ages of, 107. 
 Fatamites, 93. 
 Fathers, the, 11. 
 
 Fathers, the, Ignatius, 11. 
 
 Polycarp, ib. 
 
 Irenociis, ib. 
 Eusebius, ib., 52. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 11. 
 
 Jerome, ib., 68, 75. 
 Vigilantius, 69, 179. 
 
 Bernard, 107. 
 Faultless congregation, 257. 
 
 who compose it, ib. 
 
 Abel, 258. 
 
 Abraham, ib. 
 
 Lot, ib. 
 
 Isaiah, ib. 
 
 Luke, ib. 
 
 Peter, ib. 
 
 publican, ib. 
 
 Mary Magdalene, ib. 
 
 Paul, 259. 
 
 Tertullian, ib. 
 
 - Clement of Alexandria, ib. 
 
 what are they ? 269. 
 
 Eusebius, 259. 
 
 Athanasius, ib. 
 
 Vigilantius, ib. 
 
 Jerome, ib. 
 
 Basil, ib. 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen, ib. 
 
 Augustine, ib. 
 
 Chrysostom, 2GO. 
 
 Isaac, ib. 
 Moses, ib. 
 
 Sergius, ib. 
 
 Claude of Turin, ib. 
 
 Agobard, 261. 
 
 Henry, ib. 
 
 Peter Waldo, ib. 
 
 John Huss, ib. 
 
 Martin Luther, ib. 
 
 Calvin, ib. 
 
 Knox, 
 
 Pascal, ib. 
 
 Quesnel, ib. 
 
 where are they ? 270 
 
 Martin Boos, 262. 
 
 Fenelon, ib. 
 
 Clarkson, ib. 
 
 Wilberforce, ib. 
 
 Bunyan, ib. 
 
 Baxter, ib.
 
 534 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Faultless congregation, John 
 
 Newton, 262. 
 
 Flavel, ib. 
 
 Leighton, ib. 
 
 Simeon, ib. 
 
 Elliott, ib. 
 
 Henry Martyn, ib. 
 
 Oberlin, ib. 
 
 Robert Hall, ib. 
 
 Andrew Fuller, ib. 
 
 Wesley, ib. 
 
 Watts, ib. 
 
 Whitefield, ib. 
 
 Williams, ib. 
 
 Chalmers, ib. 
 
 whence they come, 268. 
 
 Followers of the Lamb, 241. 
 
 same as witnesses, 242. 
 
 gathered from all churches, 
 
 213. 
 
 their head, 244. 
 
 characteristics in common, 
 
 245. 
 
 complete in Christ, 216. 
 
 glory in his grace, ib. 
 
 sung a new song, ib. 
 
 great characteristics of the, 
 
 249. 
 
 how Christians are, ib. 
 
 what should be their rule 
 
 of action, 251. 
 
 their great standard, 252. 
 
 their intercourse with the 
 
 world, 253. 
 Frogs, the three unclean spirits 
 
 of infidelity, popery, priest- 
 craft, let loose under vial six, 
 
 400. 
 the old arms of France, 
 
 418. 
 
 who are, ib. 
 
 Futurists, 16. 
 
 G 
 
 Gcncseric, a burning mountain, 
 72. 
 
 ravages of, ib. 
 
 anecdote of, 73. 
 
 Gentile church, 234. 
 
 Gibbon an excellent illustrator 
 
 of Apocalypse, 280. 
 Glory to the God of heaven, 209. 
 
 given by the witnesses, ib. 
 
 due to God alone, ib. 
 
 God's universal providence, 76, 
 
 94. 
 
 jewels, 55. 
 
 Golden altar, 100. 
 
 voice from, ib. 
 
 antitype of Christ, ib. 
 
 Gospel and Apocalypse, 8. 
 
 in a convent, 212. 
 
 epitome of, 20. 
 
 neglect of, 30, 459. 
 
 abuse of, 31. 
 
 Gregory the Great, 177. 
 king of pride, ib. 
 
 H 
 
 Hailstorm, 428. 
 
 literal meaning of, 429. 
 
 figurative meaning of, ib. 
 
 Harpers, 444. 
 
 and glassy sea, ib. 
 
 song of, 445. 
 
 conquerors, ib. 
 
 character of, ib. 
 
 separate from beast, ib. 
 
 Heaven, a door in, 33. 
 
 Henry VIII., 202. 
 
 the instrument that dctach- 
 
 e'd Britain from the influence 
 
 of Rome, ib. 
 
 a devout Papist, ik, 
 
 renounced the Pope, not 
 
 Popery, ib. 
 
 his aim, 203. 
 
 his inconsistency, ib. 
 
 his death-bed, ib. 
 
 the instrument of Reform- 
 ation, ib. 
 
 Henry the Whitefield of the day, 
 183. 
 
 Hippo, siege of, 72. 
 
 Horn, little, 282. 
 
 of Daniel's fourth beast,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 535 
 
 identical with eighth head of 
 
 Apocalyptic beast, 282. 
 Horn, little, the great Antichrist, 
 
 ib. 
 made -war with the saints, 
 
 281. 
 
 Horns, ten, of the beast, 302. 
 three, plucked up before 
 
 the Pope, ib. 
 Horse, red, 42. 
 
 black, ib. 
 
 pale, 43. 
 
 white, 40. 
 
 Huns, ravages of, 73. 
 
 Ignatius, allusion to the Apoca- 
 lypse in his writings, 11. 
 
 Illiberally of the Pope, 208. 
 
 Image of beast, 324. 
 
 means Papal general coun- 
 cils, ib. 
 
 Indulgences, 129. 
 
 sale of, by Tetzel, 130. 
 
 rate of, ib. 
 
 copy of, 131. 
 
 popularity amongst peo- 
 ple, ib. 
 
 sale of, sanctioned by Cle- 
 ment VI., 116. 
 
 by Leo X., ib. 
 
 Infidel philosophers, 409. 
 
 France full of, ib. 
 
 Infidelity, 401. 
 
 its origin, ib. 
 
 evidence of the presence 
 
 of, 402. 
 
 of press, 409. 
 
 Inquisition, 115. 
 
 its author, ib. 
 
 - its organization, ib. 
 
 date of, ib. 
 
 description of, ib. 
 
 its reorganization, 1 16. 
 
 numbers burnt by, ib. 
 
 Invocation of saints, 67. 
 
 Irenagus, 11. 
 
 Irving, Edward, 13. 
 
 Islamism, 93. 
 
 rise and fall of, ib. 
 
 duration of, ib. 
 
 Jewish Church, 31. 
 
 Jews, 492. 
 
 interest in sign of the times, 
 
 388, 492. 
 
 found in every land, 390. 
 
 their restoration, 393. 
 
 missions to the, 395. 
 
 John, weeping, 37. 
 
 vision of, 36. 
 
 Judgments, national, and nation- 
 al sins, 362. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 1 1. 
 
 Justinian Code, 179. 
 
 Pope declared su- 
 preme pontiff by, ib. 
 
 K 
 
 Key, symbol of, 88, 89. 
 Kings of East, 388, 400. 
 Knox, John, 128. 
 
 his fearlessness, 129. 
 
 reverence for the truth, ib. 
 
 his epitaph, ib. 
 
 Koran, characteristics of, 85. 
 
 Lamb, song of, 39. 
 
 AaTEii/os, application of, 325. 
 
 Lateran, Council IV., 190. 
 
 held at Rome, ib, 
 
 under Leo X. and 
 
 Julius II., ib. 
 
 its object, ib. 
 
 its decision, ib. 
 
 joy at death of wit- 
 nesses, 192. 
 
 persecutions of, 1 15. 
 
 Leo X. resolves to put down 
 Luther, 135.
 
 536 
 
 IXDEX. 
 
 Leo X. issues a bull against Lu- 
 ther, 136. 
 
 dooms Luther's writings to 
 
 be burned, 138. 
 legate of, visits Worms, 
 142. 
 
 fear at Luther's preach- 
 ing, 152. 
 
 Liberty of conscience, 208. 
 
 principle of Eng- 
 land, ib. 
 
 not granted in Rome, 
 
 ib. 
 
 Licinius and Constantine, de- 
 cree of, 221. 
 
 dream of, ib. 
 
 Lindsay, Lord, anecdote of, 166. 
 
 Litany of Church of England, 
 112. 
 
 comprehensive and 
 
 scriptural, ib. 
 
 Locust, 82. 
 
 employed as a symbol, ib. 
 
 their origin, ib. 
 
 their meaning, 83, 94. 
 
 London, moral and religious sta- 
 tistics of, 402. 
 
 atheism of, 403. 
 
 antitheism of, 404. 
 
 Luther, Martin, 116. 
 
 date of, 121. 
 
 birth and lineage, ib. 
 
 childhood and poverty of, ib. 
 
 entrance at the univer- 
 sity, ib. 
 
 progress in studies, ib. 
 
 enters a convent, 122. 
 
 his reasons, ib. 
 
 finds a Bible, 123. 
 
 his conscience is awaken- 
 ed, ib. 
 
 anecdote of, 124. 
 
 his distress of mind, 125. 
 
 meets -with Staupitz, 127. 
 
 hears the gospel, ib. 
 
 finds peace through Christ, 
 
 ib. 
 
 made doctor and expound- 
 er of Bible, ib. 
 
 his doings at Wittemberg,i'6. 
 
 Luther, Martin, effect on the 
 people, 127. 
 
 his 95 " Theses," 133. 
 
 denies the power of the 
 Pope, 134. 
 
 spring of his strength, 135. 
 
 burns the Pope's bull, 136. 
 
 no thought at first of Pope 
 
 as Antichrist, 140. 
 
 no revolutionist, 141. 
 
 sees the Pope to be Anti- 
 christ, ib. 
 
 the hero of his age, 146. 
 
 his new commission, 150. 
 
 revives preaching, 151. 
 
 his first pulpit, ib. 
 
 imprisonment in castle of 
 
 Wartberg, 152. 
 
 his employment in prison, 
 
 153. 
 
 and apostolical succession, 
 
 his undauntedness of cha- 
 racter, 154. 
 
 his death, 156. 
 
 his burial, ib. 
 
 pilgrimages to his tomb, 
 
 157. 
 
 M 
 
 Mahomet, birth and education, 
 87. 
 
 his ancestors, ib. 
 
 called, 86. 
 
 Mahometanism, 84. 
 
 origin of, ib. 
 
 a military system, ib. 
 
 Maillard, Madame, 340. 
 
 as goddess of Reason, ib. 
 
 Man child, birth of, 220. 
 
 symbol of Christian people, 
 
 ib., 222. 
 
 raised to dignity, 222. 
 
 Martel, Charles, 92. 
 
 Martyrs, era of, 44. 
 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 314. 
 
 medal struck in com- 
 memoration of, 345.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 537 
 
 Maximus, vow of, 221. 
 
 decree of, ib. 
 
 cause of decree, 222. 
 
 death, of. ib. 
 
 date of, ib. 
 
 Melancthon, 128. 
 
 his disposition, ib. 
 
 at the funeral of Luther, 
 
 156. 
 
 Millennium, 485. 
 
 Christ will personally come 
 
 prior to the, 466. 
 
 the first resurrection pre- 
 cedes the, ib. 
 
 opinion of Fathers concern- 
 ing the, ib. 
 
 Augustine on, 467. 
 
 Grotius on, ib. 
 
 Whitby on, ib., 468. 
 
 the glorious state of, 483. 
 
 difficulty, attempt at solu- 
 tion, ib. 
 
 resurrection of just prior 
 
 to, 466. 
 
 arguments to prove, 
 
 470, 466. 
 
 opinion of Fathers, 
 
 466. 
 
 events that immediately 
 
 precede the, 463. 
 
 conversion of Jews prior to 
 
 the, ib. 
 
 Christ the King of glory 
 
 descending on a white horse, 
 ib. 
 
 the universality of Christ's 
 
 appearance at the, ib. 
 destruction of Papal Anti- 
 christ prior to, 464. 
 
 thrones of glory and beau- 
 ty at the, 465. 
 
 occupiers of the thrones at 
 
 the, ib. 
 
 Satan bound a thousand 
 
 years, 464. 
 
 Missionary Societies, 453. 
 
 Baptist, Dr. Carey, 
 
 453. 
 
 London, 452. 
 
 Wesleyan, ib. 
 
 Missionary Societies, Church, 
 
 453. 
 
 the Jews, ib. 
 
 Missions, 395. 
 
 interest in sign of times, 
 
 419. 
 
 to the Jews, 298. 
 
 extent of, 420. 
 
 Mohadi and Haroun Al Ras- 
 
 ched, 92. 
 Mosheim, 177. 
 
 extract from, 177, 188. 
 
 Mystery, 431. 
 
 superscription of Rome,t&. 
 
 called Mother of Harlots,i6. 
 
 N 
 
 Napoleon, his march against 
 
 Sardinia, 354. 
 
 battle of Austerlitz by, ib. 
 
 emperor of Germany made 
 
 to renounce title by, 356. 
 sun of Christendom extin- 
 
 guished by, ib. 
 
 name given by his soldiers 
 
 to, 358. 
 
 sends for Pope to his coro- 
 nation, 373. 
 
 marriage of, 357. 
 
 instrument of anger, ib. 
 
 conscription of, 359. 
 
 inducements held out by, 
 
 ib. 
 
 a mere instrument in the 
 
 of, 
 
 hands of God, 361. 
 
 Allison's description 
 
 359. 
 
 National sins, national judg- 
 ments, 107. 
 
 emblems, 82. 
 
 hieroglyphs, 40. 
 
 Netherlands, seven provinces of, 
 separate from the Popedom, 
 206. 
 
 Noble Lesson, the, 184. 
 
 Faber's translation of, ib. 
 
 extract from, ib.
 
 538 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 
 
 Oath taken by Roman Catholic 
 bishops, 207. 
 
 Oberlin, 262. 
 
 Odoacer, 74. 
 
 abolishes office of Roman 
 
 emperor, ib. 
 
 Old and New Testaments, har- 
 mony of, 282. 
 
 Pacification of Nuremberg, 200. 
 
 the decree which followed, 
 
 ib. 
 
 result of, ib. 
 
 Pagan Rome, decline of, 37. 
 
 Paulicians, 175. 
 
 Paulinus of Aquileia, 180. 
 
 Penal statutes and Reformers, 
 207. 
 
 Peter dc Bruys, 183. 
 
 Petition to Pius IX., 208. 
 
 Pillar of fire, 119. 
 
 Pope, sits on high altar to be 
 adored, 304. 
 
 vicar of Christ, 308. 
 
 royal submission to, 313. 
 
 people's submission to, 314. 
 
 Latin man, 325. 
 
 Popery, its antiquity, 1 10. 
 
 contrasted with Christian- 
 ity, ib. 
 
 a system of ignorance, 160. 
 
 antagonism of, to Christian- 
 ity, 161. 
 
 contrasted with Protestant- 
 ism, 162, 233. 
 
 distinct from Arianism, 
 
 227. 
 
 calls Antichrist, ib. 
 
 description of, 293. 
 
 and Nicene creed, 294. 
 
 plausibility of, ib. 
 
 is Puseyism at full length, 
 
 295. 
 
 captivates the senses, 296. 
 
 Popery, vulture illustration of, 
 297. 
 
 Popes, progress of their ecclesi- 
 astical power, 299. 
 
 Celestine, one of, 300. 
 
 styled successors of Peter, 
 
 301. 
 
 blasphemies of, 301 306. 
 
 Popish succession, 171. 
 
 fallacy of, ib. 
 
 illustration of, 172. 
 
 Prayer of a Carthusian monk, 
 212. 
 
 Preaching fallen into desuetude 
 before Reformation, 151. 
 
 revived by Luther, ib. 
 
 Priest, Christ as a, 22. 
 
 Priesthood, royal, 27. 
 
 Prophecy, unfulfilled, 6. 
 
 Prophesy, meaning of, 150. 
 
 Prophetic year, 106. 
 
 length of, ib. 
 
 day, length of, ib. 
 
 Protestants, why so called, 194. 
 
 where first so called, ib. 
 
 and Romish churches con- 
 trasted, 163. 
 
 Purgatory, 75. 
 
 Puseyism, 53. 
 
 and justification by faith, 
 
 164. 
 
 R 
 
 Red Sea, why so called, 446. 
 
 passage of Israelites over, 
 
 and their song of victory, ib. 
 
 Redemption through Christ, 59. 
 
 Reformation, 203, 164, 166. 
 
 its commencement in Scot- 
 land, 203. 
 
 its progression in Scotland, 
 
 204. 
 
 in England, gradual, 
 
 204. 
 
 not Revolution, 141. 
 
 Restoration, ib. 
 
 responsibilities arising from, 
 
 144, 167.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 539 
 
 Reformation, its effects, 162, 164, 
 157, 158. 
 
 corruption of Christendom 
 prior to, 115. 
 
 described in Rev. ch. x., 
 
 118. 
 
 and Tractarians, ib. 
 
 symbols of the, ib., 119. 
 
 chronology of, 119. 
 
 description of, 120. 
 
 Reformers and persecution, 206. 
 
 and Apocalypse, 8. 
 
 Reinerus on the Waldenses, 185. 
 
 Relics, veneration of, 68. 
 
 Responsibility of having the gos- 
 pel, 158, 440. 
 
 Revolution, French, 331. 
 
 offspring of Papal system, 
 
 ib., 344. 
 
 the noisome ulcer, 332. 
 
 Burke on, 333. 
 
 description of, ib. 
 
 tribunal of, 334. 
 
 Allison on, ib., 338. 
 
 the Noyades of, 335. 
 cruelties perpetrated at, 
 
 336. 
 
 Reign of Terror, 337. 
 
 Temple of Reason, 341. 
 
 morality abolished by, ib. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott on, ib., 
 
 342. 
 
 epithets bestowed on, ib. 
 
 Romanists, 28. 
 
 Rome, to be literally consumed 
 
 by fire, 437. 
 song after the destruction 
 
 of, 438. 
 
 the cry addressed to her, 
 " Come out of her, my peo- 
 ple," 437. 
 
 mistress of the world, 190. 
 
 meeting-place of Europe, 
 
 ib. 
 regarded as seat of power, 
 
 ib. 
 centre of western world, 
 
 191. 
 
 her disasters, 74. 
 
 Pagan, decline of, 37. 
 
 Rome, Christian, desolation of, 
 37. 
 
 Romish Church, fear of the ris- 
 ing power of Protestants, 201 . 
 
 Romulus Augustus, 74. 
 
 abdication of, ib. 
 
 Royal priesthood, 27. 
 
 S 
 
 Sabbatism, millenary, 498. 
 Sacrifices, Christian, 27. 
 Saracenic woe, 92. 
 duration of, ib. 
 
 Saracens, history of, 89. 
 
 progress of, ib . 
 
 Schoehbruen, decrees of, 374. 
 Scotland, 203. 
 
 separated from the Pope- 
 
 dom, ib. 
 
 Reformation begun in, ib. 
 
 progress of, ib. 
 
 complete triumph of, 204. 
 
 Sealed ones, their duties, 60. 
 
 freedom from sickness, ib. 
 
 and sorrow, ib. 
 
 temptation, 40. 
 
 Seals, seven, opening of, 33. 
 
 first, symbol of, 39. 
 
 white horse of, 40. 
 
 second, 42. 
 
 third, opening of, ib. 
 
 fourth, opening of, 43. 
 
 fifth, opening of, 44. 
 
 sixth, opening of, 45. 
 
 Sergius, 182. 
 Seven Chiliads, 205. 
 Seven, the perfect number, 139. 
 thunders, the, ib. 
 
 their origin, 140. 
 
 applied to the Pope's 
 
 bulls, ib. 
 
 Shrewsbury, Lord, 114. 
 Signs of Christ's second advent, 
 
 478, 486. 
 
 shown to be near, 478. 
 
 the sudden nature of, 479. 
 
 the resurrection of the just, 
 
 481.
 
 540 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Signs of Christ's second advent, 
 
 character of saints in reference 
 
 to it, 487. 
 -which indicate the approach 
 
 of that period, 488. 
 
 increase of Popery. 490. 
 
 activity on part of Satan, 
 
 494. 
 increasing systems of error, 
 
 ib. 
 
 Doctor Arnold on, 495. 
 
 increase of missionary ex- 
 ertion, 497. 
 the apathy and unbelief 
 
 that precede it, 498. 
 Silence in heaven, 66. 
 Slaving of men, seven thousand, 
 
 205. 
 Socialism, infidel character of, 
 
 407. 
 
 visit to a hall of, ib. 
 
 destruction of social system, 
 
 ib. 
 calls marriage a Satanic 
 
 institution, 408. 
 Socinianism, 162. 
 Socinians, 28. 
 Song in heaven, 222. 
 
 meaning of, ib. 
 
 of the Lamb, 39. 
 
 Spirits, seven, 35. 
 
 Stars, 219, 86. 
 
 Apocalyptic meaning of, 
 
 219. 
 Staupitz, 126. 
 
 his character, ib. 
 
 Street, Greek for, 189. 
 
 meaning of, ib. 
 
 Strype, extract from, 210. 
 Sultan Hunkiar, 102. 
 
 his mission, ib. 
 
 tyranny of, 1 05. 
 
 Symbols, use of, 35. 
 
 Tail, 104. 
 
 origin of, 105. 
 
 official symbol of, ib. 
 
 Tail, mark of distinction, 105. 
 
 exponent of Turkish rule, 
 
 ib. 
 
 national symbol, ib. 
 
 Testimony of witnesses, 177. 
 
 completion of, 186. 
 
 extinction of, 187. 
 
 Milner on, 188. 
 
 Tetzel, 129. 
 
 sale of indulgences by, ib. 
 
 blasphemy of, 130. 
 
 instrument of Leo X., 137. 
 
 Theodosius the Great, 228. 
 
 character of, ib. 
 
 protection of Church, ib. 
 
 opposition to Paganism and 
 
 Arianism, ib. 
 
 Augustine encouraged by, 
 
 229. 
 
 Togrul Beg, 101. 
 
 declares war against Chris- 
 tendom, ib. 
 
 date of, ib. 
 
 his progress and victories,?*. 
 
 Tractarians, object to explain 
 away Popery, 283. 
 
 their effort to introduce 
 
 Popery, ib. 
 
 their interpretation of 2 
 
 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy 
 iii., ib. 
 
 Trees, olive, Apocalyptic mean- 
 ing of, 174. 
 
 Tribulation, 58. 
 
 use of, ib. 
 
 Trumpet, first, 71. 
 
 dramatic picture of, ib. 
 
 effects of, ib. 
 
 second, effects on Africa 
 
 and Adriatic, 72. 
 
 on Mediterranean, ib. 
 
 third, effects on rivers, etc., 
 
 73. 
 
 fourth, effects on sun and 
 
 moon, 74. 
 
 darkness followed, ib. 
 
 s, four first, 65. 
 
 fifth, 81. 
 
 sixth, 97, 100.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 541 
 
 Trumpet, sixth, 97. 
 
 four angels loosed, 101. 
 
 Turkish woe, 97. 
 
 duration of, 106. 
 
 effects on the Apostacy, 107 
 
 109. 
 
 symbols, 70. 
 
 use of, under Levitical eco- 
 nomy, ib. 
 Truth, to be spoken boldly, 155. 
 
 needs no apology, ib. 
 
 Turks, 101. 
 
 invasion of, ib. 
 
 U 
 
 Unfulfilled prophecy, 97. 
 Unrecognised blessings, 29. 
 Use of symbols, 35. 
 
 Vial first, 327. 
 physical intimations of, 328. 
 
 nature and action of, 329. 
 
 agencies employed in, ib. 
 
 localities of, 330. 
 
 ulcer not unfrequent em- 
 blem of, 331. 
 
 pouring out of, ib. 
 
 prepared by Voltaire, ib. 
 
 date of, ib. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott on, 331 . 
 
 Vial second, 348. 
 
 Wormwood, the star, 350. 
 
 locality of, ib. 
 
 revolutionary spirit of, ib. 
 
 effects upon maritime de- 
 pendencies of France, 352. 
 
 poured out upon the sea, ib. 
 
 fulfilment of, ib. 
 
 Vial third, 348. 
 
 pouring out of on rivers 
 
 and fountains, 353. 
 
 locality of, ib. 
 
 Napoleon instrument of, 
 
 354. 
 
 result of, 353. 
 
 Vial fourth, 357. 
 
 Emperor of Germany com- 
 pelled to renounce his title of 
 Emperor of the Holy Roman 
 Empire, 356. 
 
 duration of pouring out of, 
 
 357. 
 
 power given to the angel to 
 
 scorch men with fire, ib. 
 
 Napoleon illustration of, ib. 
 
 Vial fifth, 367. 
 
 its locality, ib. 
 
 its effects upon Rome, 369. 
 
 sprinklings of, ib. 
 
 confiscation of lands of 
 
 Church, ib. 
 
 the clergy required to ab- 
 jure allegiance to Pope, 370. 
 
 churches turned into sta- 
 bles, ib. 
 
 tithes confiscated, ib. 
 
 seizure of Pope in Vatican, 
 
 372. 
 
 failed to produce repent- 
 
 ance, 375. 
 Vial sixth, 382. 
 
 locality of, ib. 
 
 date of, 383. 
 
 three unclean spirits under. 
 
 ib. 
 Vial seventh, 422. 
 
 locality of, ib. 
 
 poured into air, ib. 
 
 universal effects of, 423. 
 
 moral influence of, ib. 
 
 literal influence of, 424. 
 
 great earthquake under, 
 
 426. 
 city divided into three parts, 
 
 427. 
 fall of established Churches 
 
 predicted under, 428. 
 hailstorm, ib. 
 
 Babylon came into remem- 
 brance before God, 429. 
 Vigilantius, 179. 
 Virgin Mary, 114. 
 
 miracles of, ib. 
 
 as mediatrix, ib. 
 
 propitiation through, ib.
 
 542 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Virgin Mary, winking image of, 
 
 377. 
 
 Vision of John, 36. 
 Volney, character of, 83. 
 
 W 
 
 Waddington, Dean. 192. 
 
 extract from writings of, ib. 
 
 Waldenses, 214, 175184. 
 Reinerus's testimony to, 
 
 185. 
 
 their missionary spirit, ib. 
 
 called sackcloth wearing 
 
 heretics, ib. 
 
 crusades against, 187. 
 
 persecution of, sanctioned 
 
 by Lateran IV., ib. 
 Waldo, Peter, 184. 
 War in heaven, 222. 
 between Christianity and 
 
 Paganism, ib. 
 
 result of, ib. 
 
 date of, ib. 
 
 Wilberforce, 448. 
 
 character of, 449. 
 
 work of, 450. 
 
 Witnesses, 168. 
 
 Greek for, 172. 
 
 meaning of, ib. 
 
 two, 168, 175. 
 
 are persons, 173. 
 
 " My," 174. 
 
 called two olive trees, ib. 
 
 two candlesticks, ib. 
 
 stand before the Lord, 175. 
 
 their number, ib. 
 
 Paulicians, ib. 
 
 Waldenses, ib. 
 
 prerogative of the, 176. 
 
 fire proceeded from their 
 
 mouths, ib. 
 
 their prophecy, 177. 
 
 duration of, ib. 
 
 beginning of their testi- 
 mony, ib. 
 
 chronology of, ib. 
 
 Augustine, 179. 
 
 Vigilantius, ib. 
 
 Witnesses, Csesarius of Aries, 
 179. 
 
 Serenus, 180. 
 
 Council of Frankfort, ib. 
 
 Alcuin, ib. 
 
 Zwingle, 211. 
 
 Paulinus of Aquileia, ISO. 
 
 Agobard, ib. 
 
 Claude of Turin, ib. 
 
 Gottcschalc, 181. 
 
 Constantine, 182. 
 
 Simeon, ib. 
 
 Sergius, ib. 
 
 Calvin, 211. 
 
 Beranger, 183. 
 
 Peter de Bruys, ib. 
 
 Henry, ib. 
 
 Peter Waldo, 184. 
 
 invulnerable to all curses 
 
 pronounced by the Papacy, 
 185. 
 
 the completion of their tes- 
 timony, 186. 
 
 war against, ib. 
 
 defeat and death of, 187. 
 
 a succession of individuals, 
 
 ib. 
 
 figurative, ib. 
 
 their bodies to lie in street 
 
 of the city, 188. 
 complete suppression of, 
 
 191. 
 
 denied Christian burial, ib. 
 
 joy at death of, 192. 
 
 to lie unburied, ib. 
 
 length of time, 193. 
 
 resurrection of the, in the 
 
 person of Martin Luther, 194. 
 
 ascension of, 195. 
 
 congratulations sent to 
 
 Pope on death of, 1 98. 
 
 how they ascended, ] 99. 
 
 duration of sackcloth testi- 
 mony of, 217. 
 enemies of the, beheld 
 
 them, 201. 
 
 gave glory to God, 209. 
 
 in all ages for Christ, 212. 
 
 in Church of Rome, ib. 
 
 their principles, ib.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 543 
 
 Woe, cry denouncing it to the 
 inhabitants of the earth, '224. 
 
 cause of, ib. 
 
 pronounced from heaven, 
 
 75. 
 
 first, or Saracenic, 81. 
 
 second, or Turkish, 106. 
 
 Woman in the wilderness, 21 G. 
 
 appearance of, ib. 
 
 recession of, into wilderness, 
 
 217. 
 
 length of sojourn in wilder- 
 ness of the, ib. 
 
 not the Virgin Mary, 218. 
 
 Woman, represents Christ's true 
 Church, 218. 
 
 and the sealed ones, ib. 
 
 clothed with the sun, ib. 
 
 flight into wilderness, 227. 
 
 bestowment of wings, ib. 
 
 Mosheim on, ib. 
 
 Woman, the harlot Church, 429. 
 
 clothed with purple and 
 
 scarlet, 430. 
 
 called " Mystery," 431. 
 
 great characteristic of, 435. 
 
 " Write," meaning of, 147. 
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