forward in another line of prophecy. This is to be found in chapter xiv., which, in connection with chap. vii., may be read as follows:-" After the commotions and wars of the French revolution had ceased, I saw the final exterminating wars suspended, until the servants of God were sealed in their foreheads. The numbers sealed I heard described under the symbol of one hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of Israel. And I looked, and lo! the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written upon their foreheads. And they sang, as it were, a new song BEFORE THE THRONE, and before the four living creatures, and the elders." But there still remains, as an additional confirmation, one other remarkable expression-"and no one was able to learn the song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed FROM THE EARTH," not from the grave! And the expression is again more fully repeated in the next verse: "These were redeemed from among MEN, being the first-fruits to God and the Lamb!"

*

Nothing can more clearly identify the sealed number with those before the throne, than these words; and it does not appear possible to accommodate any event to meet the requirements of the true church being found in such a state and place, and in such honour, redeemed from the earth-redeemed from

* Rev. xiv. 4, 5.

amongst men; but by the admission of a translation direct from earth to heaven. It is an event which our Saviour himself leads us to expect will some time or other happen, when he says, "And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."*"Then shall two be in the field, the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left."+

And looking at the nature of the judgments from which the righteous, by this superlatively glorious interposition, are to be rescued; remembering that they are described in language conveying ideas of the most complete and perfect destruction, attended with the most unmitigated horrors of war and blood and national ruin, it seems impossible to imagine any mode of safety than what is miraculous.

It appears to me that the feeling of every rightminded Christian on the subject ought to be this; that seeing God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son to bleed and to die for us; seeing the subjects of his grace are so precious in his sight as he hath declared they are; remembering what he has done, and what he has said he will do, for their sakes, and the honour which is assuredly laid up for them, and which they all allow and expect ; that there is nothing here predicted which ought or need to be incredible, nothing but what, supported

by such evidence, they may well believe ;-for, after all, however startling at the first sight it may appear-however contrary to our previously conceived ideas-there is really nothing but what is analogous to God's former proceedings.

Every believer believes, or professes to believe, that his soul shall be conveyed to heaven on its dismission from the body; and what, if God wills, on closing the present dispensation, that He will magnify his own grace in doing a new thing in the sight of an apostate and persecuting world, and indeed a world which up to that moment has bitterly persecuted his servants?-what, if He wills to shev their value in his sight, by sending, as in the case of Elijah, chariots of fire and horses of fire to convey them to heaven-what is there in all this incompatible with their high calling? what is there to which they need object? The real difference consists only in the method of conveyance. The end that awaits all believers is substantially the same, whether they pass through the territories of the grave, or are caught up to meet the Lord in the air. May each soul, therefore, say, "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief."

THE OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL;

Or a Solemn Pause.

"And when he opened the Seventh Seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour." (viii. 1.)

In reflecting upon the contents of this seal, or the

THE SEVENTH SEAL.

113

seventh opened roll, or volume, or book, which, compared with the six former ones, is a very small one, we must recollect where the last, or sixth seal, as above described, left us. It left us with the church translated to heaven before the throne of God, as a deliverance from the overwhelming misery and ruin that were coming upon the world. The opening of this seal, therefore, must be some new position or epoch in the empire, which we may suppose to arise from the most fearful apprehensions of the coming vengeance and ruin,-an epoch which will be characterized by an entire cessation from action, for this the word "silence," used as a symbol, signifiesa cessation something like what we should designate a state of paralysis-an awful pause in the immediate and certain prospect of utter and overwhelming ruin. It will be a pause, a solemn pause the nations awaiting in anxious and tremulous suspense the blow that is to cause their extinction, the extinction of the ten-kingdomed Roman empireand with that, that of the great image of Daniel, the last of the Gentile monarchies of the world!

The "Seals" therefore, or any act or new order of things having the seals of empire, must, with this act of "silence," be closed for ever; and another series of events which we shall now proceed to trace from its beginning, and bring up to this point of time, will carry on the short remainder of the history to millennial blessedness, or the establishment of the kingdom of Christ.

I would conclude this part of the Book of the Revelation with one or two general observations.

1. How near and intimate the heavenly world has been brought to our view and recognition!

2. How intimately the church in heaven appears to be acquainted with the concerns of the church on earth!

This appears from the Apostle having been summoned by the whole body of the general assembly and church of the first-born in heaven, to "come and see;" by the martyrs under the fifth seal knowing that vengeance was delayed; and by one of the "elders" giving the information respecting the newlyarrived translated company before the throne! The parts assigned to such characters seem to be most inappropriate, if we suppose them ignorant of what was passing in the world.

3. I would again repeat, that we are brought, by this series of events here detailed, to the near prospect of a great persecution, and to an immediate subsequent national ruin, without the assistance of any prophetical CHRONOLOGY. The very general objection therefore, which on this score is made to the study of this subject, does not apply here, any more than in the historical narrative of Daniel's last vision, in the latter part of his eleventh chapter. * From both, we perceive that a certain period of quietness is to be enjoyed, after the commotions, wars, and changes occasioned by the

* Diss. ch. xiii. p. 344.