and water courses of Italy. "Then Aquileia, Pavia, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Turin, felt his vengeance: from the Alps to the Appenines (says Sigonius) all was flight, depopulation, slaughter, slavery, and despair. Many fled to the low and marshy islands at the mouth of the Adige, Po, and Brenta, as their only safe refuge: and he who has seen fair Venice may do well to remember that he has seen in it a memorial of the terrors and ravages of that scourge of God—the Hun Attila" (Elliott i. 357).

The Empire of the West was now wasted and enfeebled to the last degree, and Romulus Augustus retained little more than the empty title of an emperor. Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, a mere barbarian remnant of the host of Attila, interposed with his command that both the name and office of Roman Emperor of the West should be abolished. The authorities bowed submissively-the last phantom of an emperor abdicated-and the Senate sent away the imperial insignia to Constantinople. This was A.D. 476; and it is remarkable that the names of Romulus the founder of Rome, and of Augustus the founder of the Empire, should be united in the last of the emperors of the West; as also new Romethe metropolis of the East-was founded by one Constantine and finally taken by the Turks, and the Eastern Empire destroyed under another Constantine.

This subversion of the Western Empire we regard as the event symbolized by the darkening of the heavenly luminaries under the fourth trumpet. It is an event of such magnitude that it must necessarily have a place in prophecy, and we know not where else it can be found if we do not place it here; and the symbols are the highest that can be chosen, and must therefore denote an event of the greatest importance -such as the unique and unparalleled event now before us; and thus nothing remained in the West capable of hindering the development of the power of the Papacy, which was, in fact, shortly after sanctioned by the Eastern emperors: the supremacy being conceded to the Pope by Justinian, A.D. 533, and being confirmed and rendered effectual by Phocas, A.D. 606.

This was the development of the little horn of the seventh chapter of Daniel: the development of the little horn of the eighth chapter arose somewhat later, and belongs to the Eastern Empire and is symbolized under the fifth and sixth trumpets, being the Mahommedan imposture, a scourge on the Eastern Church for sins of the same kind which brought the scourge of the Papacy upon the Western Church, And

by the Eastern and Western Churches we do not understand territorial or geographical divisions, but an acknowledgment of the Patriarch of Constantinople, or the Pope of Rome, as their respective heads; and also using the Greek or Latin languages as the authorized version of Scripture, and in their respective Church services and other religious offices.

The fifth trumpet has its period assigned as five months, which, being of thirty days each, will amount to one hundred and fifty days, prophetic of so many years. It was in A.D. 612 that Mahomet first began publicly to broach his imposture and to obtain followers; and Bagdad on the Euphrates, or the city of peace, which is generally regarded as denoting the termination of the bloody career of the Saracens, was founded A.D. 762-one hundred and fifty years after the first promulgation of the Mahommedan imposture; and it was from Bagdad on the Euphrates that the four angels of the sixth trumpet were loosed.

Under the sixth trumpet these angels were commissioned to their work of destruction during an hour, a day, a month, and a year—the length of this period depending upon the number of days which we reckon in a year. We think that the common scriptural reckoning of three hundred and sixty days is to be preferred; and an hour, the twelfth part of a day, being the symbol of a month, the twelfth part of a year is thirty days, a day is a year, a month is thirty years, and a year is three hundred and sixty years-making three hundred and ninety-one years and thirty days. Togrul Beg of the Seljukian race was the founder of the Turkish Empire, and had been invited to his assistance by the Caliph of Bagdad A.D. 1055. As, however, this produced no effect upon Christendom, we would rather date the loosing of the angels from A.D. 1062, when Alp Arslan, or the valiant lion as the name signifies, the nephew of Togrul Beg, succeeded to the office, title, and spirit of his uncle; for, as Constantinople fell A.D. 1453, this date of 1062 would be exactly three hundred and ninety-one years before that final catastrophe of the Greek Empire.

Under Togrul Beg "the great Turkish nation adopted the religion of Mahomet; and professing it with all the energy of their native character, and all the zeal of recent converts, they became its fierce champions at that precise era when it was losing its hold on the human intellect; and but for the support of their simple, rude, uncriticising, credulous, and vehement spirit, might have quietly expired” (Forster's Mah, Unveiled, i. 221).

The name "Arslan," lion, seems to have reference to the prophetic symbol, though no doubt bestowed on account of personal bravery; for it is written, " I saw in the vision the heads of the horses as the heads of lions." "He passed the Euphrates at the head of the Turkish cavalry, and the loss of the kingdom and frontier of Armenia was the news of a day" (Gibbon x. 352).

This was A.D. 1063. We do not think it needful to find four powers in existence at the same time, as the four angels of the Euphrates: we conceive the interpretation to be, that during the course of this trumpet four destructive hosts have crossed the Euphrates to lay waste the Eastern Empire. And we think that the conditions of the prophecy are sufficiently answered by those four great irruptions which stand out prominently on the page of history: that of the Seljuks under Alp Arslan, A.D. 1062-that of Zenghis Khan and the Moguls, A.D. 1200-that of the Othmans, A.D. 1299-and that of Tamerlane, A.D. 1402; and after the death of Tamerlane the Ottoman Empire revived, the Turks soon became masters of Constantinople, and retain possession of it to the present day.

The rise of the Turkish Empire-the fluctuations eastward and westward which it occasioned-and its ultimate subjugation of the Greek Empire, were the means, in the hand of Providence, of bringing about a revolution in the European mind most momentous to the progress and fortunes of mankind. For, first, it was the exciting cause of that mighty movement, the Crusades, which agitated the whole of Western Europe for many centuries; precipitating all the ardent, and reckless, and ambitious spirits of Christendom, upon Greece, Asia Minor, and Palestine. Many heeded nothing and learned nothing-still more perished in these rash expeditions; but a sufficient number survived to bring back to the comparatively barbarous regions of Western Europe some portion of the superior elegance, refinement, and courtesy, which they had seen practised among the better classes, both of Greeks and Mahomedans, whom they once despised.

Under Zenghis and Tamerlane, again, the East poured forth mighty torrents, rolling to the West, bringing Mongols and Tartars from the wall of China into contact with the Teutonic and Frank races of Germany and Gaul. Tamerlane is reputed to have ruled over a larger portion of the surface of the earth than had ever before been subject to the sway of one man. And the vast hosts which he was able to

bring into the field, and transport with such rapidity from Samarcand to Delhi, and from India to the Bosphorus, reminded modern times of the ancient ravages of the Scythians, and shook together, so to speak, the most distant nations, who till that time had scarcely entertained the idea of each others' existence. The Emperor Manuel Paleologus and Henry III. of Castile sent ambassadors to Samarcand.

But the fall of Constantinople it was that, more than any other event of history, became the producing cause of European civilization, and the consequent ascendancy which Europe has attained over the rest of the world. For multitudes of the Greeks, driven westward by the Turks, carried a taste for literature and the arts with them; and many of them were learned men and professors, who carried with them manuscripts of great value: by the invention of printing, which soon after took place, these were multiplied, and diffused a taste for classical learning throughout Western Europe. It was by Greek artists that the knowledge of painting was brought into Italy, where it attained such perfection in the hands of Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Michael Angelo, and Raphael; and the Greek influence on literature was still more marked and extensive, for it was felt throughout all the countries of Western Europe, producing first the revival of learning at the end of the fifteenth century; and then, shortly after, the Reformation of the sixteenth.

Thus the four first seals, which are so distinct in character from the rest, become the introduction to the vision of the trumpets; and the sixth trumpet introduces the Reformation, which is the next vision in order of arrangement as well as in time. For we have become quite convinced by Mr. Elliott's arguments that the Reformation is the subject of the vision which opens in the tenth chapter and continues to the thirteenth. If any of our readers entertain doubts on this point, and wish for full satisfaction, we cannot do better than refer them to Mr. Elliott's work, ii. 39-176. Our limits will not allow of doing justice to the argument and we must assume the fact of its being proved; and must content ourselves with showing how the Reformation tallies with and explains the prophecy; merely remarking that we think so remarkable an event as the Reformation might be expected to have a place in prophecy; and, if it be not here, we know not where it is to be found.

The characteristic feature of the Reformation is that it put an open Bible in the hands of the Church-of the whole Church, laity as well as clergy-and in the vernacular lan

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guage of the people-not in dead languages understood by none but the learned. This is indicated in the tenth chapter by the mighty angel who is the representative of Christ bearing an open book in his hand, which book St. John, who represents the Church, is commanded to eat, in order that he might prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings (x. 11).

The Scripture put into the hands of the Church did its own work, and became like a second promulgation of the Gospel. It first taught the Church itself how far she had departed from the simplicity of the Gospel by following after the commandments and doctrines of men, having been spoiled through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ (Col. ii. 8-22). It was thus not only enabled to read its past history in a new light and to amend its own ways, but felt that it had the commission given at the beginning renewed and confirmed, and was emboldened to publish the Gospel in its original freshness and purity, knowing that the Lord was with them and would own his word.

The Reformation was in this sense a renewal of the Gospel commission and a revival of the primitive witness to the Gentile nations; and, therefore, the history turns back to the first ages of the Church which are now to be regarded in a truer light, and also traces out the various antichristian forms of opposition which it has had to encounter, which are now to be presented in a new aspect; and the prophecy looks forward to the end of time, when the Church shall be perfected, and all its enemies shall be destroyed, in order to assure us that there shall be no second failure, but that the work then revived should stand for ever. Of this the angel gives us the triple assurance-first, in planting his feet on the earth and the sea to denote that he is then come to take possession-secondly, in lifting up his hand to heaven and swearing that there shall be time no longer-thirdly, in declaring that when the seventh angel shall begin to sound the mystery of God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

And the Reformation is made the means of gathering the elect out of all nations, and so preparing for the first resurrection and the translation of the saints. For this event will precede the sounding of the seventh trumpet, which will coincide with the seventh seal and seventh vial, and all the vials have to be poured out, after the translation of the saints, before the sounding of the seventh trumpet; and this