x.]

of the mystic period.

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ritance of the privileges of the Jew, but also since the barbarian tribes of Western Europe, one after another, were admitted to the outer court of the Christian temple, and to tread the holy city, by being made members of the Christian Church, those who are unable to identify with any crisis in its past history the season of trial here revealed, will begin anxiously to watch the further unfolding of a vision which seems hitherto, in its dim outline, as far as the actual fulfilment casts light upon it, to be reflected not obscurely in the history of the Church.

To us, especially, in this land where the light of truth hath so long shone, appearing so often and so signally, as the historic roll is unfolded which exhibits, through the darkest times of Christian Europe, the testimony continually borne in the Churches, more or less brightly and strongly, to primitive faith and purity;-to members of a Church like ours, whose calm, yet firm and steady protest, from the æra of the Reformation, for ancient Catholic truth against modern Romish corruption, has made her, through God's mercy, a light of the Christian world, -her candlestick unremoved from its place, and though once for a short season temporarily overshadowed, yet even then meanwhile burning the more brightly within;-a Church which, in her polity, exhibits the same Apostolic form with those seven to which St. John's prophetic message was sent, and which has had the light in her lamp fed and sustained hitherto, under the gracious care of God's good Providence, by ministries of His Divine appointment, in the kingdom and the priesthood, whereby the Church should consecrate the State, and the State protect and support the Church;—to us a vision, like that which was revealed to the

Y

322

Prospect of coming trial.

[LECT.

evangelic prophet and apostle, cannot fail to be one of deep and special interest. And this the more if, at any time, looking abroad on the face of the world, we should see the current of popular opinion, or the theories of political science, running counter to that view of Christian duty which has stamped itself on the ancient system of our Christian states and kingdoms, recognizing and honouring the alliance of government with religion, cherishing the lights of wisdom and knowledge, and the sacred institutions which uphold them, as ministrative and subservient to Divine Truth; and investing the rulers of the people, like the prince of the captivity of Judah, with that highest prerogative and glory of being the builders and defenders of the Church of God".

What, however, we are to understand as shadowed out by that persecuting form of irreligious, or Antichristian, power which is described in the vision as "the beast that ascendeth out of the abyss," and which was to "make war" upon the prophetic witnesses, will come under our consideration on a future occasion, in examining the vision which immediately follows. But whatever that power be, or however it may triumph for a time,—if the season of its temporary triumph be indeed still to come,-we have, at all events, the consolation of knowing, on the warrant of "the sure word of prophecy," that its time of triumph shall be but short; that those days of trial and affliction are numbered, "three days (or years) and a half," and no more,-a few days only, "few and evil," and then the triumph, great and glorious, shall be on the side of the faithful witnesses.

" Vid. Note, Appendix.

x.]

Blessing of faithfulness.

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May it please Him who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, to grant to us, of His great mercy, the faithfulness, and the reward, of that Church', of the seven in Asia, to which the promise was graciously given,-"Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown 2."

1

1 Philadelphia.

2 Rev. iii. 10, 11.

LECTURE XI.'

REV. xiii. 5.

"And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months."

THERE is nothing more remarkable in the visions of sacred Prophecy than the manner in which, without any appearance of design, one vision unfolds more fully what had been dimly sketched in the preceding, or completes the view of that of which only the first germ and origin had been discovered before. We have had occasion to notice this in the book of Daniel, particularly in regard to Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the image, and Daniel's of the four beasts: and we have a not less striking instance in the vision before us, as compared with that which last engaged our attention, and in which was described the prophetic ministry of the two witnesses.

We saw there how the end of their appointed ministry, when now it had been carried on through the appointed period of "a thousand two hundred and threescore days," was to be this," the beast that ascendeth out of the abyss shall make war

1 Preached Jan. 5, 1845.

Opening of a new Vision.

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against them, and overcome them and kill them." Nothing had as yet been said concerning this tyrannical and persecuting power: it was reserved for the vision on which we are now to enter, to describe it fully, and to mark definitively the place which it was to occupy in the history of the Church's warfare. It might appear, indeed, at first sight from the opening of the vision which is unfolded in the twelfth chapter, as if it were altogether a new scene that is there revealed :—but we find, ere long, that it is designed to exhibit to us fully and clearly the agents of evil whose deeds of malice and cruelty had but been partially discovered before. And, in order to describe "in all its parts, and to enable us the better to understand the conflict, by ascertaining the combatants, the Holy Spirit begins the figurative history," as it would seem, "from the earliest times of the Church; and past events are represented in the same allegory which is continued to foretel those which are to come"."

2

"And there appeared," says St. John, "a great wonder,”—or "sign3-in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." By the general consent of interpreters the Woman here described represents the Church of God, arrayed with heavenly glory; no earthly material being borrowed to clothe or adorn her, but the luminaries of heaven, the sun and the moon, and the twelve stars. The imagery thus employed may remind us of that which we find in Joseph's vision; the twelve stars, in particular, representing, it would seem, as there, the heads of the chosen family, the one Church of God, answering

2 Woodhouse, Annotations, pp. 243, 244.

3

σημεῖον.

4

Gen. xxxvii. 9.