Bonaparte; and the fourth closes with the close of his empire. A few verses sum up his history. And, united in his person, the third and fourth vials are not less intimately connected, or less clearly consecutive, even to contact, than any of the antecedent prophecies that follow in their order. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains 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 of prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy. And I heard another angel 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.

He who loveth God loves his brother also; but while the fiercest passions were at work, men fearlessly plasphemed the name of God. To swear like a dragoon, a trooper, or a tar, became proverbial expressions. Such at least, was not the spirit by which men were actuated on the former grand moral revolution in Europe,-even though the Reformation was followed by wars. And neither the civil wars and subsequent "commonwealth" in Britain, nor our glorious Revolution, were marked by such a brand of blasphemy. But when religious restraints as well as superstitious fears were dissipated by the revolution of France, execrations, almost at every word, gave free vent to the practical infidelity of the hardened hearts of men; devotional feelings gave way together with the softer affections of humanity; and none were ever more mindful of the glory of

the God of heaven, than those who executed those judgments or partook of these plagues. The general irreligious character, or utter ungodliness of the time, is too manifest as well as too melancholy an illustration. It is not alone in such a death as that of Lasnes, duke of Montebello,-who falling in the battle of Asperne, replied with angry imprecations, when told that his wound was mortal, and "blasphemed heaven and earth that he should be denied to see the end of the campaign,"-that we may see exhibited the maddened spirit of the times: but blasphemy-the soldier's licence and the sufferer's resource was rife on earth, as if Europe had been a province of Pandemonium. And as touching the not repenting to give God glory, may it not be asked, even in our own land, where the light of the gospel is so widely diffused, and where our forefathers, in days of peril, assembled in the dens and in the caves to worship, and would have sacrificed their lives rather than forfeit their religious liberty, how many families called Christian, are there still in which the worship of God is not, how many parishes in which, as a practice beyond a mere form of hearing on the sabbath, it is scarcely known; and though happily now less rare than at the close of the revolutionary and imperial wars of France, which began with the open renunciation of the belief of a God, do not illustrations yet abound, by thousands on thousands, from the want alike of true godliness and righteousness, that men repented not to give him glory?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FIFTH VIAL.

On the sounding of the fifth trumpet, (Rev. ix. 2.) the bottomless pit was opened; 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. Mahometanism arose; and the world was darkened by its doctrines, as well as punished by the arms of the Saracens. But, while also noting the darkened state of the minds of men, the fourth vial limits the description of the gross darkness conjoined with bitter miseries, peculiarly characteristic of the specific period, to the kingdom of the beast, or the dominions over which the papacy, on its re-establishment, still held its sway. And the state of that kingdom is described as full of darkness, and marked also by misery, blasphemy, and impenitence, without the designation or intervention of any external cause.

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.

Looking to change after change, and marking the succeeding forms of the time, in almanac notoriety and manifest evidence, we thus read in the chronology of remarkable events, in the year 1814;-"The allied grand armies cross the Rhine.-The French defeated at Toulouse; Bordeaux entered by the British; the French evacuate Spain, and King Fer

dinand restored.-The allied armies enter Paris.Bonaparte deposed. The Bourbons restored, and a general peace concluded-The French evacuate Italy, Germany, and Flanders, and return within their ancient territory. The king of Spain dissolves the Cortes, abrogates the new constitution, and all the laws favourable to the liberty of the subject; REVIVES THE INQUISITION and the order of the Jesuits.-THE

POPE RE-ESTABLISHED IN HIS DOMINIONS.

*

In the beginning of the year 1812, when the Emperor Napoleon had under his immediate command or "entire control," armies amounting to one million, one hundred and eighty-seven thousand men, and when the Bourbons were in exile, Ferdinand in captivity, and the pope a prisoner, the wildest speculatist could not have dreamt, that, in 1814, the Bourbons would be restored, Ferdinand reinstated in his kingdom, and the pope re-established in his dominions. Yet though, immediately before, it had no existence but in name, and the imperial power of Bonaparte domineered over all, no sooner had that power ceased, than the kingdom of the beast reassumed its place in history, as it was the very next word in prophecy. And the dark and miserable state of the papal kingdoms, or wherever the domination of the papacy prevailed, is the precise and limited theme of the prediction.

Previously to the downfall of Napoleon, the state of Europe was that of uniform subjection to the one unvaried "Continental system." But after his fall, a marked contrast may be drawn between Protestant and Catholic states. There was peace externally over both. The high hand of the Holy Alliance was stretched over Europe, to check international wars, and insurrectionary movements. Over

* Edinburgh Almanac, 1918, &c. p. 32.

Roman Catholic kingdoms, popery was again associated with despotism. And there peculiarly, as the dark record of their fate gives proof, we are taught to look for darkness and misery. It might here suffice to mention the very names of Portugal, Spain, South America, Italy, and Ireland, as contrasted with Sweden, Denmark, North America, Holland and Scotland, to point to the chief regions of darkness and of woe.

From the days of Justinian to those of the French Revolution, during the appointed time in which the saints of the Most High were to be tried, and the time and laws to be given into the hands of the papal power, the suppression of light was the work of the papacy, and persecution the means. But they who kept the testimony of Jesus loved not their lives unto the death; to whatever bodily torture they were subjected, faith and patience were theirs ; and it was the character of the witnesses of Jesus to praise and not to blaspheme the Lord. From the Revolution of France to the dethronement of Napoleon, except where at first they who had the mark of the beast were afflicted with a noisome and grievous sore, opinions were free, and, when superstition was shaken, infidelity abounded. And at the close of the era of marvellous and righteous judgments, which followed each other in rapid succession, constitutionalists, eager for civil liberty, took the place of the believers in Jesus, who laid down their lives for the faith, and became, in their stead, the victims of papal and despotic persecution. The inflicting power was the same, but the sufferers were different. Men were in darkness, while it was not the light of the gospel for which they struggled; and in their agony they found no comfort which they suffered not in the cause of religious liberty, nor looked to Jesus, who gives rest unto