since both its grandeur and power will be both swept away. The only alternative therefore appears that it must be what we have above considered it, an ascension TO HEAVEN. It is a great thing to expect; but if God has decreed it-and it is declared by St. Paul, that those who are alive at his coming shall be caught up to meet him in the air*— it is not too much to believe and to expect.

Few, I imagine, will be disposed to quarrel with such a termination of their sufferings, when their fainting spirits are passing through the deepest waters of human sorrow and suffering, which they will experience in the great tribulation, and when at length they shall behold the most horrid wars and devastations ready to burst over the heads of an ungodly world. Oh no! they well then understand what our Saviour means in saying, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh."+ This solemn and heart-inspiring truth, the speedy return of Christ to the earth, and their own consequent ascension to heaven, will enable them to smile in persecution, in reproach, and in death; and in joyful anticipation to exclaim, " Come, Lord Jesus! O come quickly!"

All these things being accomplished, and the object of relating them in this place in the book of the Revelation attained-which object was to join

* 1 Thess. iv. 17.

+ Luke xxi. 28.

the concluding scenes of the time, times, and half a time, with the ceasing of the sixth trumpet, thereby more clearly to demonstrate the simultaneous conclusion of the two periods—it is at last said (ver. 14), "THE SECOND WOE IS PAST!" The Turkish empire. which for so many years has been tottering, drying up, wasting away, now falls: to which announcement is immediately added, “Behold !”—take particular notice of it!" Behold, the third woe cometh QUICKLY!"

In the chapter on the second woe, I have expressed my conviction that the period assigned for its continuance, which has been explained to signify 391 years, is to be calculated as the period which the Turkish power, the instrument of it, is to keep possession of Constantinople, the capital of the ancient Eastern Roman Empire; this being the great work for which it was prepared." Mahomet the Second took it on the 29th of May, A.D. 1453; on which occasion he slew Constantine Paleologus, the last of above a thousand years' succession of Roman emperors, and destroyed, as has been already described, with unwonted barbarity, the inhabitants; and in the complete conquest of the empire which followed, he triumphed alike over Christianity and the Roman name in that quarter of the world.

No period of time appears to be more clearly marked; and unwilling as any person may be to

*Ch. ix.

attend to prophetical dates, it seems difficult in this case to pass them over, or to pronounce them obscure. This great event, the fall of the capital of the Cæsars, stands so prominently recorded in the annals of Europe, as an event of surpassing importance and grandeur, as one of those great catastrophes that shake the stability of surrounding nations, and make the world to tremble-it agrees so fully in all the particulars of the siege, and the important results with the prophecy that has recorded it—and it bears, in all respects, so completely the distinguishing marks which have been explained to belong to a prophetical era, that there appears no possible reason to hesitate in considering it as the true event forming the commencement of this most important chronological period. All preceding events in the Turkish annals, how much soever they may have attracted the notice of former commentators, are now out of the question; as 391 years, reckoned from any one of them, probable or improbable as they might have appeared, must have long ago expired; whereas the Ottoman empire yet stands. Nor is there any succeeding event in their history but what sinks into insignificance compared with it. In the eyes of Gibbon it was so pre-eminently great, as to be made to close what he styles "the memorable series of revolutions which, in the course of thirteen centuries, gradually undermined, and at length destroyed, the solid fabric of Roman greatness :"*

*See Preface to Decline and Fall.

which series of revolutions he traces from the age of Trajan, A.D. 98, the date within a year or so of the writing of the Apocalypse, to the taking of Constantinople in 1453.

The empire of Turkey is in fact most emphatically the empire of Mahomet II.; he being in virtue of this great conquest, the acknowledged founder of its greatness, and hence he is considered by Knolles, in his history of the Turks, and by other historians, the first Ottoman emperor. In the same sense was Cyrus the founder of the Persian greatness, and Alexander the Great of that of Greece. All these respective monarchies had existed for centuries previous to the important position they were to assume in connection with the church of God, and the prophetic earth. They had all previously been prepared for the work they were destined by God to accomplish; but they are only recognized in prophecy in its actual accomplishment. From the point of time, therefore, when this commences, it seems but reasonable that any assigned length of duration or chronological period should be reckoned. And as if to mark the importance of this date of an hour, day, month, and year, it stands first of all others in the book of Revelation; in fact, it is the only original one, except the thousand years of the Millennium, in this prophecy, and appears to be placed in connection with the sixth trumpet, for the purpose of drawing all others around it. For let this but be correctly ascertained, and it appears to be one of no difficult calculation, it will follow, from the contents of the tenth and

pre

eleventh chapters, without touching on other dictions to prove the fact, that "the time of the end," the restoration of the Jews, the fall of the Papacy and the Western nations, and the deliverance of the church, will be likewise ascertained, as all are destined to happen at one and the same period of time; since it is after the particular enumeration of all these, or in direct reference to them, and not before, that it is said, "The second woe is past."

Indeed it is most observable, that the indications of the fall of Mahometanism as an ecclesiastical imposture in the Old Testament, under the appellation of "the time of the end," and in the New Testament as the passing away of the "second woe," are held forth as a signal; as something that was to be very visible, portending the certain near approach of all the great consummations above mentioned. Most probably the reason of this is because the Turks or Ottomans are in possession of the country of the Jews, whose restoration to the land of their fathers is to be the crisis of all nations. Therefore it is, that the fall of their empire is held up, both in the Old and New Testaments, as the sign of "the times of the Gentiles" being fulfilled. It is not without reason, therefore, that the present critical situation of Turkey, and the anticipations of the wisest politicians respecting the probability of its speedy downfall, excite at the present moment such marked attention in those who at all turn their minds to these things, both as it concerns the Jews and Gentiles. There are, indeed, many other signs of