application of the book to be to all time or to be limited to a particular crisis of the Church. Another objection is that long periods are spoken of in the Revelation, such as Christ reigning a thousand years; but it is the belief of many expositors that all that seems chronological in the Apocalypse is symbolical, not real, and such a view can be supported on good critical grounds. Against this objection may be balanced others equally opposed to any long continuance of the platform of the visions, such as, Behold, I come quickly," and " the time is at hand." Whatever opinion we may form on the question, it will be found beset with difficulties, but we do not think those which surround our hypothesis more formidable than such as lie against any other theory.

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II. We now come to consider the fruitlessness of all attempts to apply the scenes of the Revelation historically, as corroborating the view that it may have had a past reference. This is a very large subject, but we must treat it within narrow limits. A complete history of Apocalyptic interpretation would be as curious a production as the mind could conceive of, exhibiting an almost incredible amount of labour, employed both with humble reverence and presumptuous levity and carelessness, and all the various shades of human piety and folly between those extremes. In early ages, indeed, divines were more modest than those who came after them, and the sentiment of Dionysius of Alexandria as given by Eusebius may be said to express the prevailing view of the Church before the invention of printing. "He did not understand the Apocalypse, and what was written in it transcended his comprehension." There were indeed numerous attempts made to explain special portions of the book, but there was never anything, before the Reformation, which recommended itself to the church at large as a key to unlock its mysteries. What Arias Montanus said of the commentators who went before him will well apply to all that was done to explicate the Apocalypse before it began to be applied to the Church of Rome;-he asserts that after studying the Scriptures for thirty years he was in the habit of saying "that the reading of the Apocalypse was understood by himself better than by any of the commentators whom he had happened to read; since they proceeded to explain it as if they understood it, and then, by their varying expositions, rendered it only the more obscure; whereas he himself confessed that he did not understand it at all."

But in more modern times, that is, since the Reformation, this part of Scripture has engaged the scrutiny of men to an extraordinary degree, and while there have been some sensible

treatises written on the subject, the great part of the literature of the Apocalypse exhibits a melancholy spectacle of human presumption, ignorant conceit, and folly. Much has been done to improve the Greek text of the book, and much has also been pertinently written to throw light upon its symbols and emblems as they are illustrated by the language of the Old Testament. Had men stopped here it would have been well, and a reproach now heavily pressing on biblical studies would have been avoided. But they ran wild in an exegesis whose implements were the freaks of their own fancy, and whose results are more calculated to excite laughter and contempt than to gain any worthy credence. While Pererius could affirm that the Apocalypse "must be altogether incomprehensible without an especial revelation from God," more modern theologians have read it off as if it were plain history, even without any of that general "inspiration of the Almighty which giveth understanding" to humble and devout seekers after truth. Need we quote more to justify any language of reproof and sarcasm that we might employ, than the following specimen of the Apocalyptic sketches of a popular pulpit orator who often appears in print. He is expounding (?) chap. ix. 10, “And they had tails like unto scorpions," and he says, "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, and told his troops that must be their standard when they marched to battle!" We cannot wonder that such wanton foolery as this should provoke disgust in some minds, and a reaction to an opposite extreme in others. Some grave divines who perpetrate the nonsense we are alluding to would treat as a poor mad woman the authoress of the following rhapsodies, sent to us repeatedly in print. Yet are not such insane conceptions closely allied to their own? Yet further, are not such wild thoughts encouraged in the weak and ignorant by the pernicious comments of men who ought to know better?

"And the sixth angel (Seljuk, Rev. ix. 13) poured out his (Turkish and Mogul) vial (of wrath against all idolatry) upon the great river Euphrates (at Bagdad); and the (baptismal) water (of the great Babylonial and Romish whore of the nations, Rev. xvii. 15) thereof was dried up (destroyed, Rev. ix. 11, 15), that the way of the (Moslem) kings of the East (as far as China, in 1250) might be prepared (for Elizabeth's baptism of the Holy Ghost, from April 8, 1839. Matt. iii. 3, 7-12; ii. 2; xxiv. 27, 36, 43; Cant. vi. 10).

"WEST.

"Verse 13.

"And I saw three unclean spirits like (French) frogs come out of the mouth of the (Greek) dragon (Emperor), and out of the mouth of the beast (Roman Pontiff), and out of the mouth of the false (Koran) prophet. For they are the spirits (priests) of devils (tyrants), working (lying) miracles, which go forth (with their armies) unto the kings of the (old Roman) earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I (Elizabeth, the person of the Holy Ghost) come as a thief (to steal away the British nation). Blessed is he that watcheth (for Elizabeth), and keepeth his (royal Jewish) garments, lest he (like the Continental despots) walk naked (uncircumcised), and they see his shame (his poverty and his paganism).'

Would that the reading of this melancholy trash might deter some of the more staid, yet not less mischievous, Apocalyptic fulfilment-mongers!

We cannot wonder that a writer in opposition to these makers and solvers of spiritual conundrums should lose all patience, and exclaim, "I found,-what did I not find that did not savour of the apocryphal and the marvellous? I found that no limit would be put to my credulity, and that at last I was required to believe that a certain hailstorm which injured parts of France, on Sunday, July 13th, 1788, was foretold in the Apocalypse; and that a little frog, called the Tractarian heresy, had been heard by St. John to croak all the way from St. Barnabas to Patmos, at a distance of nearly 2,000 years!"

The great stimulus to the production of the immense mass of crude and unhallowed speculation on the book of the Revelation in modern times, has been the imagined discovery that its most pregnant passages are prophecies of the Church of Rome. It does not appear that the German Reformers, at the commencement of their labours, saw the use which was afterwards made of the Apocalypse against the Papacy, for some of them, as Luther, Zwingle, and Carlstadt, either denied or doubted its canonicity. Luther's opinion is worth placing here, both as an illustration of the general subject and of the rashness of the Reformer :

"There are many reasons why I regard this book as neither apostolical nor prophetical. First and principally, the apostles do not make use of visions, but prophecy in clear and plain language, as do Peter, Paul, and Christ also in the Gospel; for it is suitable to the apostolic office to speak clearly and without figure or vision respecting Christ and his acts. There is also no prophet in the Old Testament, not to mention the New, who

e The Apocalypse Fulfilled, etc. By the Rev. P. S. Desprez, B.D. Preface.

treats of visions throughout; so that the fourth book of Esdras is almost equal to it in my estimation; and certainly I cannot perceive that it proceeded from the Holy Spirit. Besides, it seems to me too much for him to enjoin it rigorously on his readers to regard his own work as of more importance than any other sacred book, and to threaten that if any one shall take aught away from it, God will take away from him his part in the book of life. Again, if even they are to be blessed who hold to what is contained in it, no man knows what that is, much less what holding to it means. The case is all the same as though we had it not; and many more valuable books exist for us to hold to. Many of the fathers, too, rejected it long ago; and though St. Jerome employs big words, and says that it is above all praise, yet he cannot prove that; and in several places his praise is moderate. Finally, let every man think of it as his spirit prompts him. My spirit cannot adapt itself to the book; and it is reason enough for me why I should not esteem it very highly that Christ is neither taught in it nor acknowledged, which above all things an apostle is bound to do; for he says (Acts i.), Ye shall be my witnesses. I abide therefore by the books which give Christ to me clearly and purely."

But since their time it has been almost conceded among Protestants that both St. Paul and St. John, writing of the man of sin, of the beast, and of Antichrist, prophesied distinctly and solely of Rome. It was so desirable to gain some scriptural justification of the dissent from Rome, and a biblical argument against a doctrinal opponent is deemed so essentially important, that we cannot wonder, while we may lament, that the odium theologicum should betake itself to this mysterious book as a quiver full of appropriate arrows against the enemy. In ordinary matters, men would rather hesitate to adopt a mode of reasoning which is so evidently dependent on subjective grounds, when an adversary had to be assailed, and prefer a weapon of less doubtful proof; but in theological warfare it seems to be thought better to imitate the example of Jael, and to take any instrument of slaughter which may come to hand, than that of St. Paul, who exhorts us to "prove all things."

We do not say that the Apocalypse is not a prophecy of things yet future, nor yet that the corruptions of the Church of Rome are not denounced in it-far from it. We trust that we are sufficiently reverent towards God, and conscious of our own intellectual feebleness, to feel that Holy Scripture almost necessarily contains heights we cannot scale and depths we cannot fathom; and our conception of its marvellous fulness is too decided to allow us to think that its designs are yet all unfolded, or its adaptation to the state of man is yet all disclosed. But what we think we have a right to say, without presumption, is this: That the applications of this book to past and passing and future events in the history of Christendom, so recklessly and

plentifully made by modern schools of theology, are neither warranted by the premises nor confirmed by experience. If the Apocalypse is a mirror of the world's history, it has never yet presented its disk in the right focus so as to enable men to see its pictures clearly and thus to make the predictions and the things predicted correspond; and until something less of the character of the kaleidoscope appears in the attempts of men to identify the prophecies, we must be allowed to suspend our judgment, and to suspect that the Revelation may have answered its direct object long ago. What egregious, what entire failure marks the thousands of pamphlets, sermons, and volumes, which have been written on this subject! What student of Scripture, not blinded by a theory, or misled by a foregone conclusion, can believe that the Apocalypse can be historically interpreted with our present resources, after the Church, for long ages, has attempted the task in vain! As has been said by a writer on this question, it is like the quadrature of the circle, morally possible, yet so highly improbable as to be only attempted by weak or oversanguine men. The Revelation may have a key to unlock its dark recesses, but the long and unsuccessful search for it is a rational argument for desisting from the hopeless task. Reasoning from analogy we go farther than this and say, that past want of success is a reason for believing that the Revelation does not apply to successive eras of the Church's history, for had it done so, surely by this time that application would have been discovered; discovered, we mean with such a moral_certainty as would have taken its fulfilled predictions out of the sphere of fancy and fanaticism.

If we take the number of the beast, so enigmatically alluded to in Chapter xiii., we find the interpretations so numerous and yet so contrary the one to the other, that the very mention of most of them would provoke a smile, if a reflection on human credulity did not produce more serious emotions. From the TEITAN of Irenæus, to the NAPOLEON of a modern soothsayer, the hundreds of guesses all indicate a very forlorn cause, and it appears extraordinary that these repeated and continued failures do not turn men upon some other scent, and make them suspect that a literal and arithmetical solution was not intended. There is something too cabalistic-too much like the nugae of Jewish scribes in the worst state of their literature, in this turning the Word of God into riddles, to allow of our admitting its legitimacy without full authority. Had we been plainly informed by a sacred writer that the number 600 or 666 adumbrated a man's name, to be picked out or guessed at by the numerical value of its letters, we must have submitted our own judgment to such a