ject of this part is the setting up of Christ's kingdom in the world to triumph over Paganism, &c., with the political revo lutions which took place in the Roman Empire, so far as they affected the Church, or the kingdom of Christ on earth. The third part is the sounding of the seven trumpets, which place antichrist upon his throne. This includes a general apostacy from the faith-the retirement of the true Church into the wilderness-the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth-their destruction, death, and burial, with their revival and resurrection, (chap. viii. to xiv. inclusive.) The fourth part is the pouring out of the seven vials, effecting the consumption of the man of sin-the binding Satan for 1000 years-the mille nial period parallel with it—the loosing Satan for a seasonthe second personal coming of the Saviour-the resurrection of the dead and general judgment-the destruction of the present system by fire-the creation of a new heaven and new earth-and the happiness of the saints with Christ in His everlasting kingdom, (chap. xvi. to xxii.) There are interspersed throughout the whole several episodes; some of a delightful, others of a sublime and awful kind. The 4th, 5th, 7th, 14th, 15th, and beginning of the 19th chapters, contain a representation of the anthems and songs of praise of the inhabitants of heaven. John introduces the awfully mysterious and sacred Three who bear record in heaven. The Father is designed as Him who is, and was, and is to come; as Moses said, from everlasting to everlasting God. The Spirit is peculiarly distinguished as the seven spirits before the Father's throne. He is thus desig nated, not in number, nor in nature, but on account of His infinite and adorable plenitude and perfection, and the diver sity of His gifts, manifestations, and operations, (Zech. iii. 9.) Seven denotes fulness and perfection. It is a large, complete, yet unequal number; it was a mystical number universally in the Old Testament, and is so partly under the New. The epoch of creation, Gen. ii. 2; the flood, vii. 2-4; viii. 10-12; xxix. 18; xxxiii. 3; xli. 18; Exod. xxv. 37; Lev. iv. 6; xxiii. 15; xxv. 4; Numb. xxiii. 1; Josh. vi. 4; Judges xvi. 7; Ruth iv. 15; 1 Sam. ii. 5; 1 Kings xviii. 43; 2 Kings v. 10; Esther i. 10; Job xlii. 8; Eccles. xi. 2; Isa. xxx. 26; Jer. xv. 9; Dan. iii.19: Matth. xviii. 22; Luke xi. 26; xvii. 4. These passages might have been increased seven times; but let any person turn them all up, and if he has any penetration, he will be perfectly amazed. Not one of them seems to be stammered upon by accident; they are all the offspring of deep, undesigned design. The seventh day, Sabbath, and the cause and origin of that, regulates the whole. How easily we pass over the most important things. If seven apparitions were to appear to us, or seven witches to bewitch us, or seven fairies to dog us, we would never forget them. The rustling of a leaf, the whispering of the wind, the chirping of the cricket, would catch our ear and agitate our frame; but we tread unthinkingly over places, and hear heedlessly of events which affected past ages and generations. Jesus Christ the Son is mentioned with some of His official characters. After a beautiful doxology, he foretells sublimely His second coming, and introduces the Saviour himself asserting His own eternal, essential, and unoriginated Deity. The main subjects of the book are composed of sevens. There are seven spirits, seven angels, seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials, seven thunders, seven heads of the dragon, seven forms of government, seven hills, seven last plagues. By what means the number seven became so important to the people of God in former times, so representative of completion and universality, we may partly collect from their history. God had revealed to them, that His own great work of creation had been completed in six days, and He rested upon the seventh. In commemoration thereof, He commanded them to reckon time by seven,-thus seven days to the Sabbath-day, seven months to the Sabbatical month, seven years to the Sabbatical year, seven times seven years to the great Sabbatical year, or year of jubilee. And when, upon their entrance into Canaan, it pleased Him miraculously to deliver the city of Jericho into their hands, He ordered seven priests with seven trumpets, preceding them, to march round it seven days; and on the seventh, or Sabbath-day, on which the walls fell, they were instructed to encompass it seven times. It is not, therefore, from any casual or arbitrary notion that the number seven has been thus dignified. It is entitled to this distinction from the natural order of things, which the adorable Creator was pleased to establish at the bringing of this world into existence. A day is a natural measure of time, and, multiplied by seven, forms that natural period of a week which most conveniently multiplies again, so as to form months and years. It was, long ago, observed by the learned Scaliger, that the number seven is, of all others, the most fit to measure the courses of the sun and moon. measure of time by weeks, or by the intervention of the num ber seven, is not, therefore, altogether arbitrary; it has a foundation in the nature of things; and the discovery of this circumstance is a proof, that the great God, who created the world in six days, and contemplated its perfection on the seventh, and after this rule established the number seven; for the mea The sure of time acted, in this circumstance, with that providentia order and harmony which characterize the rest of His works Chap. i. 9-20.-Tue island to which John was banished by Domitian, or rather, Diocletian, in the Archipelago, or Egean Sea, between Greece and the Lesser Asia, so called by being confined between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It contains Mysia, Lydia, Caria, Bithynia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Lycia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Lycaonia, Cilicia, all provinces in it, and most of them mentioned in the New Testament; and all the towns and countries mentioned by Paul are in it, or in Greece, consisting of Achaia, containing Athens, Corinth, Cenchrea, Sparta, enclosed be tween the Archipelago and Adriatic by Macedonia, where are Berea, Thessalonica, and Philippi, with Thrace between the Ægean and Euxine, or Black Sea, and Illyricum and Dalmatia on the east of the Adriatic, which divides them from Italy, nearly opposite Rome, situated on the west side of Italy. John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. God at first rested, or ceased from His creative work, and blessed the seventh day, and set it apart in commemoration of His resting from the work of creation; and He gave it to Israel in their law, to be observed in commemoration of that event, and also of redeeming them from Egyptian bondage, and causing them to enter into His rest in the land of Canaan. But when Christ had finished the work of redemption, and entered into His rest, which He did on the first day of the week, and first day of creation, He, as the Lord of the Sabbath, gave it to His churches as a day of holy convocation, to be statedly observed by them as a day of sacred rest, in commemoration of His resurrection from the dead. On this day the first Christians came together to observe the ordinances of Divine worship, the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers, celebrating the praises of redeeming love. When John wrote the book of Revelation, the first day of the week was universally known among the churches by the name of the Lord's day, which intimates, though, like many other things not specially mentioned, that it was instituted by the Lord Jesus, sacred to His memory, and commemorative of His work, even as the breaking of bread is, for these reasons, called the Lord's Supper. John was in a spiritual frame of mind, occupied with heavenly meditations and exercises; and while thus employed, the spirit of prophecy came upon him, and he heard a voice speaking unto him. He turned to see the person who spoke to him, and saw his exalted Redeemer, clothed much like the Jewish high-priest on the great day of atone ment, (Exod. xxxix. 5) His appearance was glorious and terrible, like that of the Ancient of Days mentioned by Daniel, (vii. 9-14.) His voice was like the sound of many water-spouts, or cataracts, though equal to the falls of Niagara; for what can equal the voice of the Eternal? (Psal. xxix.) John was quite overpowered. He hastens to comfort His beloved apostle, and cominands him to write things past, present, and to come. He explains to him the stars as signifying the angels or elders of the Seven Churches, and the seven candlesticks as representing the Seven Churches. Ephesus was situated on the River Cayster. It was the metropolis of the Lydian Asia. Paul resided three years in it, and delivered to the elders a most tender, pathetic, and warning address when parting at Miletus, and wrote to them afterwards an admirable epistle. In Ephesus was the farfained temple of Diana, 405 feet in length, 227 in breadth, and 70 in height, supported by 127 pillars of marble. It was 200 years in building, at the cost of the whole of Asia. It was seven times set on fire. One of these times was when Socrates was obliged to drink the poison, and another when Alexander the Great was born. The books burned, containing the Ephesian Letters, or occult sciences, mentioned Acts xix., cost 50,000 pieces of silver, or £1500. Ephesus and the other churches had a long and terribly sifting trial for nearly 300 years, till the conversion of Constantine the Great. It was ruined in 312, on the general fall of the Greek empire in Asia, and never recovered. Smyrna, at the head of a winding gulf of the Grecian Archipelago, was about 45 miles northward from Ephesus. It was to have tribulation ten days, or years, (Numb. xiv. 34.) The ten years of awful and general persecution, were from 303 to 313, under Diocletian and Galerius, when a bold attempt was made to extirpate the Christian name. Ten was not always taken in a literal, but sometimes in a mystical sense for many, (Job xix. 3; Dan i. 20.) Smyrna was ruined in the Turkish invasion, about 1050; but has since recovered, and is now the principal city in the Levant, or Archipelago, being situated on a gulf of that sea, about 70 miles from Chios, and containing about 150,000 inhabitants. There are immense burying-grounds around it, of from twenty to thirty acres, filled with tombs, and overshadowed with cypress trees. About ten years after the writing of these epistles, the imperial sceptre was swayed by Trajan, who appointed the ingenious and philosophic Pliny to the government of Bithynia, in the vicinity of the Seven Churches. In the year T 106, or 107, he wrote the following letter to the emperor:C. Pliny to Trajan Emperor, Health. It is my usual custom, Sir, to refer all things of which I harbour any doubts to you. For who can better direct my judgment in its hesita tion, or instruct my understanding in its ignorance? I never had the fortune to be present at any examination of Christians before I came into the province. I am, therefore, at a loss to determine what is the usual object either of inquiry or of punishment, and to what length either of them is to be carried. It has also been with me a question very problematical, whether any distinction should be made between the young and the old, the tender and the robust,-whether any room should be given for repentance, or the guilt of Christianity once incurred, is not be expiated by the most unequivocal retractation, whether the name itself, abstracted from any flagitiousness of conduct, or the crimes connected with the name, be the object of punishment? In the meantime, this has been my method with respect to those who were brought before me as Christians. I asked them whether they were Christians? If they pleaded guilty, I interrogated them twice afresh, with a menace of capital punishment. In case of obstinate perseverance, I ordered them to be executed; for of this I had no doubt, whatever was the nature of their religion, that a sullen and obstinate inflexibility called for the vengeance of the magistrate. Some there were infected with the same madness whom, on account of their privilege of citizenship, I reserved to be sent to Rome to your tribunal. In the course of this business, informations pouring in, as is usual when they are encouraged, more cases occurred. An anonymous libel was exhibited, with a catalogue of names of persons who yet declared that they were not Christians then, or ever had been; and they repeated after me an invocation of the gods, and of your image, which, for this purpose, I had ordered to be brought with the images of the deities. They performed sacred rites with wine and frankincense, and execrated Christ,-none of which things, I am told, a real Christian can ever be compelled to do. On this account I dismissed them. Others, named by an informer, first affirmed, and then denied the charge of Christianity, declaring, that they had been Christians, but had desisted some three years ago; others still longer; some even twenty years ago. All of them worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and also execrated Christ; and this was the account which they gave of the nature of the religion they once had professed,-whether it deserves the name of crime or error, namely, that they were accustomed, on a stated day, to meet - |