of the Mahometans from the deserts of Arabia to the banks of the Indus and the shores of the Atlantic: The period of the two first woes was marked by centuries. The first hurt and tormented, from the one end of Europe to the other; the second became a settled woe, and, after a preparation of nearly four centuries, the sultan of the Turks occupied the throne of the Cæsars. From the taking of Constantinople, half a century, marked by continued impenitence in Western Europe, intervened till the time of the Reformation, which descended upon the earth like a mighty angel from heaven, with a little open book in his hand. After the establishment of the Reformation, itself of angelic likeness, and resplendent with light like pillars of fire amidst surrounding darkness, seven great successive wars ensued, affecting the interests of protestantism, and from which the political settlement of Europe and America took the form of it maintained at the eve of the French Revolution. After the seven thunders had uttered their voices, time was to be no longer; and it was given to John to prophesy again.

The various forms of religion, and commotions or revolutions of kingdoms, having thus successively passed in vision before him, a reed, like unto a rod, was put in his hand, and he was commanded to measure the temple of God and the altar, and them that worship therein. The testifying of the witnesses, clothed in sackcloth; the contest of the church from first to last; the enemies that consecutively arose to destroy or subvert the kingdom of God and of his Christ, are described or measured, as if they had been a platform at his feet, over which he had only to stretch the measuring line in his hand.. To us, its termination may not yet be distinctly seen, after eighteen centuries have, in a large measure, filled up the space, which then had no local habitation but in the eye of the prophet,

and which nothing on earth could then touch but the reed that was given him. Yet the oft-repeated limits of one space in time, and one eventful period in history, supply the more abundant data for warranting the presumption, if not confirming the opinion, that the 1260 years, from the time that the churches were given into the hands of the pope till the time that the judgment began to sit, comprised a period which, taking its date in the reign of Justinian, terminated in the revolution of France. If such a presumption be borne out by Scripture and by facts, then so far as hitherto brought down, the prophetic, political, and ecclesiastical records would jointly bring us to the same point, and lead us to the entrance on a new order of events. These, however, like all that preceeded them, have not to be tried by verisimilitude alone, but each must exhibit its own defined character, as well as occupy its appointed place, if the judgments of God be indeed so manifest that not a word could be wrested in accordance with a fancy, without distorting the figure set before us in the oracles of God.

Returning, then, to the exact point to which history had brought us down, we may trace the analogy anew, but in a defined and more distinctive form, between the words of prophecy and the records of history. The "state of Europe," in respect both to the character of the philosophy which prevailed at that very period, and the political excitements which betokened an approaching convulsion, is thus summarily described;-of the former, it is said,

"A set of men, many of them of talents of the first order, arrogating to themselves the exclusive title of philosophers, and actuated at first, perhaps, by a zeal for the truth, carried on an incessant warfare against all that they were pleased to designate as superstition and vulgar prejudice. But theirs was not that philosophy which elevated above all

low and grovelling passions, and irradiated by light from heaven, views with pity rather than contempt the aberrations of man, and seeks by mild and gentle method to lead him into the way of truth. It was heartless, cold, and cheerless: its summum bonum was sensual indulgence or literary fame, and few of its professors displayed any real dignity of soul; its favourite weapon was ridicule; it attacked not only the absurdities of the popular faith, but it levelled its shafts at the sublimest truths of religion; it shook the firmest bases of social order, and sought to rob man of all lofty hopes and aspirations. Every mode of composition, from highest science and most serious history, down to the lightest tale, with which was often joined a sickly affected sensibility, calculated to gain it admittance into the female bosom. The consequence was, as might be expected, a general laxity of principle.

"The chief seat of this philosophy was France, where a court corrupt and profligate, beyond, perhaps any which Europe had yet witnessed, had utterly degraded the minds of the upper classes of society. The efforts of the virtuous Louis XVI. to stem this torrent was unavailing; national vice was not to escape its merited chastisement. The middle. orders were disgusted and galled by the privileges of the noblesse, and their excessive pride and insolence; the writing of the philosophers, and the scandalous lives of many of the clergy, had shaken their reverence for religion; and abuses and oppression of arbitrary and extravagant government were keenly felt; the glorious struggle of the English for liberty in the last century, and the dignity and prosperity consequent on it, awakened the aspirations of the better disposed; the achievement of American independence filled the minds of many enthusiasts with vague ideas of freedom and happiness beneath republican institutions; and the lower

orders in general looked forward to any change as a benefit.

"IT WAS A TIME OF INNOVATION, TURMOIL, AND VIOLENT CHANGE. The English colonies had thrown off the bridle of the mother country, whom she curbed too straitly. The kingdom of Poland had been most nefariously dismembered. Gustavus III. of Sweden had overthrown the aristocracy, and made himself absolute. A contest arose in the United Provinces, between the party of the stadtholder and those who wished to make the government of a more republican form, which drew the attention of all the principal powers; the respective parties appealed to arms, and by the Prussian aid the republicans were crushed. All these were but preludes to the storm that was soon to burst over Europe."*

"The peace concluded at Versailles in 1783, was reasonably supposed," says Sir Walter Scott, "to augur a long repose to Europe." But the oracles of God spake not of repose as suited to the time. And only ten years elapsed, marked as a time of innovation, turmoil, and violent change, till a révolution, characterised by "unheard-of enormities," and affecting the destinies of the world, more, perhaps, than any single event in history, was perfected in one of the chief nations of Europe. The whole history of the world would be searched in vain for any parallel to such a period. Never was such a combination heard of against altars and thrones. But it came not without a cause, nor without an object to fulfil. And the historian can scarcely refrain from regarding it as the manifestation of judgment, without any allusion to the word of Revelation; nor can he withhold the admission that the

* Outlines of History, Lardner's Cyclop.

judgment was righteous. The unasked concession is extorted by facts. And, while innumerable witnesses, trained up in scepticism, were actors in the scene, a modern writer, of unequalled popularity and fame, who is not prone to introduce religion, takes up, when needful, the task of commentator.

"The Catholic church had GROWN OLD, and unfortunately did not possess the means of renovating her doctrines, or improving her constitution, so as to keep pace with the enlargement of the human understanding. The lofty claims to infallibility which she had set up and maintained during the middle ages,-claims which she could neither renounce nor modify,-now threatened in more enlightened times, like battlements too heavy for the foundation, to be the means of ruining the edifice they were designed to defend. Vestigia nulla retrorsum, continued to be the motto of the church of Rome. She could explain nothing, soften nothing, renounce nothing, consistently with her assertion of impeccability. The whole trash which had been accumulated for ages of darkness and ignorance, whether consisting of extravagant pretensions, incredible assertions, absurd doctrines which confounded the understanding, or puerile ceremonies which revolted the taste, were alike incapable of being explained away or abandoned. Infidelity, in attacking the absurd claims and extravagant doctrines of the church of Rome, had artfully availed herself of those abuses, as if they had been really a part of the Christian religion; and they whose credulity could not digest the grossest articles of the papist creed, thought themselves entitled to conclude, in general, against religion itself, from the abuses engrafted on it by ignorance and priesthood.*

"The mask of religion has been often used to cover more savage and extensive persecutions, but at no time did the spirit of intrigue, of personal malice, of slander and circumvention, appear more disgustingly from under the sacred disguise; and in the eyes of the thoughtless and the vulgar, the general cause of religion suffered in proportion.

"Partaking of the licence of its professors, the degraded literature of modern times called into its alliance that immorality, which not only Christian, but even heathen philosophy had considered as the wise, great, and happy state of existence. The licentiousness which walked abroad in such disgusting and undisguised nakedness, was a part of the unhappy. bequest left by the Regent Duke of Orleans to the country which he governed. The conduct of Orleans and his minions was marked with open infamy, deep enough to have called down in the age of miracles an immediate

*Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. i. pp. 26, 27.