(Revelation 6:12-17)

THE SIXTH SEAL—WRONG APPLICATIONS OF IT—DESCRIBES FEARFUL PRODIGIES IN NATURE—GENERAL CONVULSION—DARKENING OF SUN AND MOON—FALLING OF THE STARS—RECOIL OF THE HEAVENS—MOVING OF MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS—STATE OF SOCIETY WHEN THESE THINGS COME—THE DISMAY THEY OCCASION—HOW PEOPLE WILL INTERPRET THEM—THE ABSURDITIES TO WHICH THEY WILL DRIVE MEN.

Rev. 6:12-17. (Revised Text.) And I saw when he had opened the sixth seal, and there was a great shaking; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars of the heaven fell to the earth, as a fig-tree sheddeth her untimely [or winter] figs when shaken by a great wind. And the heaven recoiled as a book [or scroll] rolling itself together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the captains of thousands, and the rich, and the mighty, and every slave, and every freedman, hid themselves in the caves and the rocks of the mountains. And they say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: because the great day of His [or, as some MSS., their] wrath is come, and who is able to stand!

We have here a sublime and startling description. Some think that it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem; others, to the persecutions under Diocletian; still more, to the victories of the Church under Constantine; and some, to the final judgment and the end of all things. But neither of these applications of this vision, as I am constrained to take it, is the true one.

The evidence is sufficiently conclusive that John wrote years after the fall of the Jewish state, whilst he is particular to tell us that all these visions refer to things to come subsequent to the time of his writing. It is also plain that the terrors described are not such as pertain to Christians, however fiercely persecuted. And the theory which applies it to the age of Constantine, besides other objections which it cannot satisfactorily solve, labours under the fatal embarrassment of having to adapt a picture of sheer disaster and calamity to events which were not only, for the most part, terrorless, but whose chief characteristics were peaceful and prosperous. Had John beheld the sun bursting forth, with new lustre, from an eclipse of darkness, and the moon coming out from under a bloody obscuration, to shine with silver light, and the stars taking their places serenely in the heavens, there might be some show of adapting the description to the events marking the Constantinian period. But he saw no such things. He saw the very reverse, with not a relieving ray from first to last. Nor were all kings, rulers, and great men, then driven from their thrones and palaces to seek shelter in the rocks and mountains. With all the changes, Pagans were still permitted to enjoy full religious liberty, and did not answer at all to the terrified and conscience-stricken masses of high and low, whom we here behold confessing the power and majesty of God and the Lamb, and seeking for death to conceal them from the fearfulness of avenging wrath. And whatever secondary and imperfect fulfilments this opening of the sixth seal may have had in the history of the past, it is impossible for any one to look at it attentively without feeling that the day of judgment itself must come in order to exhaust the description, and that it belongs properly and only to those great events which immediately precede and usher in the great consummation.

And yet it does not refer to the last acts of that terrible drama. It is only the sixth seal, while there is yet a seventh to follow it. With all its terrors, it is only one link in the chain of judicial wonders which the great day will bring. Much of the language employed, and the descriptions which follow, show that we still have to do with the present order of things, although in its last stages. The action of all the seals is the action of judgment, after the saints have been taken to their Lord in the sky; and we here have the sixth in the series, whilst the final catastrophe is still deferred. Neither Titus, nor Diocletian, nor Constantine, has anything whatever to do with it; but only those people who shall be living upon the earth in "the time of the end." The words before us present two classes of facts—

I. FEARFUL PHYSICAL PRODIGIES;

II. THE EFFECTS OF THEM UPON MANKIND.

We will consider them in the order in which they are narrated, looking to God to enlighten and bless us in the attempt.

1. Great commotion in the fabric of nature. "I saw when he had opened the sixth seal, and there was a great shaking." The common version says earthquake, but the original word (σεισμὸς) is not so limited and specific. Though usually rendered earthquake, it denotes quakings in general, and is often used for any sudden and violent shaking in any part of the world. In the following verse it is applied to the shaking of the fig-tree. Matthew employs it to express tempestuous commotion of the air and sea (8:24); and in the Greek translation of Joel (2:10), it is used to denote violent disturbances in the heavens. In the form of a verb, it signifies to shake, toss, jolt, agitate,—whether the things shaken be the earth, the air, the sea, the sky, or anything else. It here includes a general shaking of the earth, as is plainly manifest from the context; but there is the same reason for extending it beyond the earth to the atmosphere, sky, and heavenly regions. The whole system of the world is implicated in the vastness and violence of the commotion.

In very many places, great convulsions of nature are spoken of in connection with special manifestations of Deity, particularly when those manifestations are of a judicial character. When God gave the law, which was for the restraint and condemnation of sin, "Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a great furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." (Ex. 19:18.) When Elijah made complaint unto the Lord that Israel had shed the blood of His prophets, and trembled for his own safety, "The Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks; and after the wind an earthquake." (1 Kings 19:11.) When Jesus was murdered, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent." (Matt. 27:50, 51.) And when Paul and Silas were beaten, imprisoned, and put into the stocks, and appealed unto the Lord in songs and prayers, "suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed." (Acts 16:26.)

Especially are such convulsions prophesied of in connection with the judgment, and the approach and consummation of the end of this world. Jesus has plainly told us that "famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes," are more and more to characterize the coming of the end. (Matt. 24:7-9.) In the preceding visions we have had the famines, pestilences, and persecutions, and here we behold the commotions of nature. Haggai has prophesied: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land" (2:6); and all this in specified connection with the coming of the Desire of nations. Paul, commenting upon this and like ancient predictions, speaks of a shaking of the earth and of the heaven, and connects this shaking with the coming administrations which are to determine and end the dispensation. (Heb. 12:26-28.)

We know something of earthquakes—how they overturn and change the surfaces of countries, sink the hills, alter the courses of rivers, overwhelm vast populations, dry up lakes, set the mountains to vomiting fire, and agitate the mightiest seas. But, in the time to come, when God shall judge the nations for their iniquities, there shall be enlargements and intensifications of such convulsions. The commotions are to be "great," and they are to extend to the whole system of our world, and to involve the very heavens.

2. To the general convulsion is added the darkening of the sun. "And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair." I take all this literally. There is neither reason nor piety in undertaking to explain away the plain terms of Scripture, where there is no necessity for departure from their common meaning. When the Lord came down on Sinai the mountain was shrouded in darkening smokiness. When Jesus hung upon the cross, "There was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened." (Luke 23:44, 45.) When the judgment of God was upon Egypt, "There was a thick darkness in all the land three days." (Ex. 10:22.) By Isaiah (33:9, 10) the word came forth: "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the earth desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. The sun shall be darkened in his going forth." The same was repeated by Joel (3:9-15). And the blessed Saviour himself has told us, that "immediately after the tribulation of those days," and soon before the appearance of the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, "shall the sun be darkened." (Matt. 24:29, 30.)

In what manner this darkening is to be produced, is nowhere told us. It may be by some natural eclipse, or it may be by some extraordinary putting forth of the power of God for the purpose. We cannot explain the three days' darkness sent upon the Egyptians, nor the darkness which prevailed during the Saviour's crucifixion. It is easy enough for Omnipotence, either by natural or miraculous causes, to fulfil His own word. Extraordinary obscurations of the sun have more than once happened, and they can just as readily be made to happen again, if God so wills, and in a still more marvellous degree of intensity. On the 19th of May, 1780, a wonderfully dark day was experienced throughout the northeastern portion of this country. The witnesses of it have described it as supernatural and unaccountable. It was not an ordinary eclipse, for the moon was nearly at the full. It was not owing to a clouded condition of the atmosphere, for the stars were visible. Yet it was so dark from nine o'clock in the morning throughout the usual hours of sunshine, that work had to be suspended, houses had to be lit with candles, the beasts and fowls went to their rest as in the night-time. And though the sun was visible, it had the appearance of being shorn of all its power of illumination. Connect such an occurrence with the general convulsions which have just been described, extend it over the world, intensify it according to the description of the text, and you may form some conception of this feature of what the opening of the sixth seal shall bring, when the sun shall be dull and rayless as the hair cloth of a Bedouin's tent.

3. A further particular is the ensanguined appearance of the moon. "And the whole moon became as blood." A writer on the Apocalypse has said:

"The further I advance in the exposition of this book of prophecy, the more convinced I feel that the key to its interpretation is to be found in the great outline of things which shall be hereafter sketched put by our Lord Jesus Christ in His prophecy on the Mount of Olives." Recurring to that "outline," we find this lunar phenomenon distinctly referred to. As the sun is to be darkened, so also "the moon shall not give her light." (Matt. 24:29.) The nature of the portentous obscuration is also described. With the privation of its usual effulgence, the moon is to be converted into an object of horror. In place of the genial silver disc, men shall behold, as it were, an orb of blood—dark, dim, sickly, and portentous. The same is spoken of in other prophecies. In Joel (2:30) we read, that before the consummation of "the great and terrible day of the Lord," not only "the sun shall be turned into darkness," but also "the moon into blood." Anticipations and foreshadows of this have, in like manner, occurred. Great convulsions in the earth and atmosphere often produce such appearances of the sun and moon. When the earth is shaken by the wrath of God, the heavenly luminaries sympathize with the general commotion; and along with this "great shaking," a shaking, not of the earth only, but of heaven also, we might well expect the sun to put on blackness, and the full moon to appear as if deluged in blood. Whatever the specific details of the manifestation may be, by whatever means produced, or however long continued, the general character of it will be sufficiently marked and terrific to correspond with the awfulness of the occasion to which it relates. Similar language may have applied to other scenes, but it will then be realized with a fulness and literalness which have never yet been, and on a scale altogether unprecedented.

4. Then comes the falling of stars.—"And the stars of the heaven fell to the earth, as a fig-tree sheddeth her untimely [or winter] figs, when shaken by a great wind." Some see in this an impossibility in the way of accepting this description as literal. But they are thinking only of the great and unknown bodies which shine in the vast fields of immensity. It remains to be proven, however, that the apostle had his eye upon stars of that character. Those heavenly orbs, of which astronomy tells, are not the only objects to which, in common language, the word stars literally applies. Even science speaks of "shooting stars," and "falling stars," which are not worlds at all, but meteors, visible only while they fall, and leaving no discoverable remains where they seem to alight. It used to be thought that they were generated in our atmosphere, but learned men now regard them as incandescent fragments of matter, detached perhaps from their proper places, and set on fire and consumed by contact with the atmosphere of the earth. Such a convulsion as the text describes, would naturally multiply the number of such loose particles, which, precipitated into our atmosphere, and ignited by contact with it, would not only fill it with moving incandescent points, such as we call shooting or falling stars, but also fulfil the image to which the apostle likens the falling. Conceiving of the physical universe as a great fig-tree, he beholds it terrifically shaken, but in no way blown down or destroyed. Only its unseasonable fruit, which winter has overtaken, and incongenial weather has rendered ready to drop, is made to fall.

There is also something peculiar in the apostle's designation of these falling stars, which does not appear in the common version, but which is worth notice. He calls them "the stars of the heaven." Not simply "the stars," as if there could be no mistake as to the objects intended—nor yet "the stars of the heavens "generally considered—but "the stars of the heaven;" some particular stars of some particular heaven. And when we call to mind that the word heaven is often used to denote the air, the atmosphere which surrounds the earth, the region in which the clouds move, it becomes more than probable that he is here referring to objects which pertain to this particular region alone. The stars proper are certainly still found in their places after the fulfilment of this vision. (See chap. 8:12.) And remembering that the Scriptures speak in the common language of men, without reference to the distinctions of science, and that even science itself still popularly speaks of "falling stars," when it means simply meteoric phenomena, it appears but reasonable that we should understand the apostle to be speaking of something of the same sort. Professor Stuart agrees that the meaning of the words is sufficiently met by such an interpretation, and that the reference most likely is to some meteoric manifestation, the like of which has once in a while happened, and which we find spoken of, among the people and in the books, under the name of falling stars.

A most marvellous meteoric shower of this class was witnessed on the night of the 13th of November, 1833. It is perhaps remembered by many how present. During the three hours of its continuance, hundreds and thousands of people, of all classes, were thrown into the utmost consternation, and filled with the belief that the very scene described in this text, was actually transpiring. Fiery balls, as luminous and as numerous as the stars, came darting after each other from the sky, with vivid streaks of light trailing in the track of each. They were of various sizes and degrees of splendour, flashing as they fell, and so bright as to awaken people from their sleep. It seemed as if every star in the firmament had suddenly shot from its sphere, and was falling to the earth. And all who saw it will bear witness that it was a most terrific spectacle.

Conceive, then, of a repetition of that scene, intensified and extended according to the spirit of this vision, with stunning explosions added to the general commotion, and the alarming rush of hissing balls of fire, darting like rain-drops from the sky, and you have exactly what John foresaw in this part of his vision of the opening of the sixth seal.

5. "And the heaven recoiled as a scroll rolling itself together." We have here the same particular heaven. With the prodigies already named, the sky folds upon itself. The fastenings which held it outstretched, are loosed in the general convulsion, and it rolls up. Great, massive, rotary motion in the whole visible expanse, is signified, as if it were folding itself up to pass away forever. Some tell us that this never can literally happen, and that we are not therefore to expect it to be fulfilled in any physical fact. But why not? Does not Peter, in a plainly literal passage, tell us of just such commotions in the aerial heavens? Does he not say, in so many words, that they shall be loosed (λυθήσονται), and move with a noisy rushing, after the manner of a tempest? And so significant and awful is to be the nature of the fact, that nearly all the prophets have taken notice of it, and foretell the same in language which we must monstrously pervert to understand in any other than a literal sense. We may not be able to describe it in the language of modern science, and philosophers may laugh at the unsophisticated descriptions of God's prophets; but, everything that relates to the coming of Christ, and the day of judgment, has upon it the same disability. And if the literal truthfulness of the record will not hold in one case, I cannot see by what reason we can insist upon it in another. God certainly is able to fulfil literally all that he has spoken, and here John tells us that he really saw what Peter and other prophets have said shall come to pass.

6. And all this is further attended with fearful changes in the configuration of the earth. "And every mountain and island were moved out of their places." These are but the natural effects of the terrible convulsions that shake everything. On a smaller scale, the same has often happened. Within the space of a month past, the world has been astounded with accounts of an earthquake along the Pacific coast of South America, by which cities and villages by the score have been blotted from the earth, islands moved in their places, mountains shaken, vast districts of shore engulfed in the sea, thousands and thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of millions of treasure destroyed. Extend the same to every country and every sea; let all the dwellers on earth be made to feel such a shock, intensified so as to hurl the mountains from their seats, and wrench the islands from their foots, and convulse each ocean from centre to circumference; let the hills exchange places with the waters, and all the consequences of such vast and sudden transformations be spread over the face of the world, with their natural effects upon its cities, its traffic, and its thronging populations, and you may have some idea of the dreadfulness of what John beheld as ordained to come to pass under the opening of this seal.

Such, then, are the physical prodigies here foreshown. Let us now look at the impression they make upon those who witness them.

"And the kings of the earth, and the great men [nobles, lords, princes], and the captains of thousands, and the rich, and the mighty, and every slave, and every freedman, hid themselves in the caves, and the rocks of the mountains; and they say to the mountains and to the rocks. Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: because the great day of His wrath is come, and who is able to stand!"

1. We have here a glimpse of the constitution and general condition of society at the time these prodigies befall the world. Some believe and teach, that free institutions are destined to become universal, and that monarchy is doomed to fall before the march of modern civilization. We here see that such hopes will not be realized. Kings are still on their thrones, and princes and orders of nobility remain, till the judgment comes. Some are looking for a blessed time of peace and prosperity in this world, when all wars shall cease, all armies be disbanded, all nations transmute their implements of destruction into instruments of husbandry, and the clash of arms be hushed forever. We here see that there will still be soldiers and military commanders pursuing their bloody profession up to the time of the end. Some will have it that universal emancipation has but a few more battles to fight, and that human slavery is as good as at an end. We here see that the day of judgment still finds slaves in the world, as well as men who have but recently been freed, and all the present distinctions of class and fortune unchanged. Suppose that the sixth seal were to be opened tonight; what would it find? Kings and emperors on their thrones; princes, nobles, dukes, and lords, securely priding themselves in the prerogatives of their caste and station; standing armies at rest and in action, and military commanders with swords upon their sides; rich people wallowing in wealth and luxury; men and women in high places and in low, working the wires that fashion events; slaves toiling at their tasks, and freedmen just out of their bondage; and evidences everywhere of a depraved and disordered state of things. This is what the judgment would find if it came tonight. And this, John tells us, is what it finds when it does come in reality. Let political reformers and theologians then say to the contrary what they please, human society as it is, and as it has been for these ages, with all its burdens, disorders, and inequalities, will continue the same, till Christ himself shall come to judge it for its sins.

2. There is one thing, however, which shall be very different under the opening of the sixth seal, from what it is now. The self-security and composure with which godless people live, will then be driven to the winds. Though all the judgments under preceding seals may have failed to appal or arouse them, they will not be able to maintain their equanimity under what this shall bring forth.

I have said, that we know something of the dreadfulness of earthquakes. And yet, We, who know them only by descriptions, cannot at all enter into the feeling of alarm and horror which they produce. A gentleman who has had some experience on the subject, says: "Although I am not a man to cry out or play the fool on such occasions, yet I do fairly own that these earthquakes are very awful, and must be felt to be understood. Before we hear the sound, or, at least, are fully conscious of hearing it, we are made sensible, I do not know how, that something uncommon is going to happen. Everything seems to change colour. Our world appears to be in disorder. All nature looks different to what it was wont to do. And we feel quite subdued and overwhelmed by some invisible power, beyond human control or comprehension. Then comes the terrible sound, distinctly heard; and immediately the solid earth is all in motion, waving to and fro like the surface of the sea. Depend upon it, a severe earthquake is enough to shake the firmest mind. No custom can teach any one to witness it without the deepest emotion of terror." But when this seal opens, not only the earth here and there, but everywhere, and the sea, and the air, and the heavens, shall shake, as for their final dissolution. And with the sun turned to blackness, and the moon to blood, and the mountains toppling from their bases, and the whole framework of nature jarring and creaking like a wrecking ship, there will come over the hearts of men a discomfiting consternation, such as they never felt or imagined.

We know something of the alarm and terror which the meteoric shower of 1833 struck into the hearts and minds of men. People now laugh at the strange demonstrations which were then enacted, and wonder how it was possible that intelligent and reflecting men could become so terrified, or act so contrary to all that had ever distinguished them before. But the truth is, that it is a good deal easier to play brave toward such things after they are over, than when they are upon us with all their solemn sublimity. And when to the falling of the stars is added the rocking of the earth, the loosening of the mountains, the darkening of sun and moon, and the tempestuous collapse of the firmament, men may think they can muster the nerve to stand it, but they will fail.

Nor does it matter who or what men may be, they will be alike overwhelmed with inexpressible dismay and horror. Kings, princes, nobles, men used to the shocks of battle, the rich, the great, the wise, the bond, the free, high and low, without exception, become the victims of their fears, and tremble, and howl, and pray, and rush to the fields, to the cellars, to the caves of the rocks, to the clefts in the mountains, to every place where shelter and concealment is dreamed of amid the general desperation. So John foresaw the scene, and so it will be. Self-possession, unshaken courage, dignified composure, philosophic thinking, hopefulness, assurance, and the last remains of the stern intrepidity and statue-like imperturbability which characterize some men now, will then have vanished from humanity. That day will destroy them utterly.

3. We notice, also, the correct interpretation which mankind will then put upon the terrific disturbances of nature around them. Storms, earthquakes, eclipses, and unusual phenomena in the heavens, are natural symbols of Divine wrath. The ancients regarded them as auguring and embodying the destroying power and wrath of Deity. They are always and everywhere precursors and prophecies of the forthcoming judgment of God. They are so presented in the Scriptures, and accordingly inwrought with all inspired diction. There is also an instinct to the same effect, which has ever lingered with the race, and which cannot be entirely suppressed. Modern science calls it superstition. Savants of earthly wisdom propose to explain all upon philosophic principles, and think to prove to us that neither God, nor His anger, nor His judgments, have aught to do with it. People also have become so enlightened nowadays, as to be above alarm at strange commotions in the elements, or signs in the sky. They have learned better. These things may all be naturally accounted for. Why, a little care might give us tables of them for a thousand years to come, with the days, and hours, and minutes noted. Indeed, men have become so knowing about Nature and her laws, that they do not see much necessity any more for a God at all, much less for any judgment or interference of His in the affairs of the universe. This is the spirit of much that men call science,—a spirit which is working itself into the popular mind, and, sad to say, largely affecting even the theological thinking and teaching of the day. But when the vision of the text comes to be realized, woe to the materialistic, pantheistic, and atheistic philosophies with which men suppose they have rid themselves of the superstitions of antiquity! One flash from the judgment throne will confound them utterly. When the sixth seal breaks, and the vibrations of it are upon the universe, turning sun and moon to darkness and blood, convulsing the firmament, shaking down the stars, and moving mountains and islands from their places, not the ignorant only, but the philosophic and the learned—kings and magnates of science and state, and all classes and kinds of men together, rush from their dwellings, strike for the caverns, cry out like terrified babes, confess to the presence of a Divine Power whose existence their superior learning had put down as a fable, and with one accord now preach and proclaim the advent of a day which they had pronounced impossible! Why this consternation—this change in their way of regarding and treating these advent doctrines—this preaching of the judgment—this trepidation and horror about the day of wrath now? This is not the way they used to deal with this subject. There is a mighty shaking indeed; but earthquakes are all from natural causes! Rather remarkable eclipses truly; but such things are easily explicable on natural principles! An extraordinary star-shower; but these are innocent periodic things which belong to the natural ongoing of the universe! Unusual storms and atmospheric commotions; but they are the results of natural causes! Why, then, this dismay at the sublime activities of nature, which a philosophic understanding should be able calmly to contemplate and really enjoy? Cowardly fools! shall we call them, to break down in the conclusions of their superior intelligence, amid such splendid opportunities for enjoyable scientific observation? Alas, alas, the old superstition is too strong for the modern wisdom! The horror-stricken world—kings, savants, heroes—with strained eyeballs and bloodless lips, fall prostrate and confess that these beautiful activities of nature and her laws, are, after all, somehow linked in with the wrath and judgment of God and the Lamb!

4. Nor is it so much the physical prodigies, as what they argue, that renders the dismay so unsupportable. If there were nothing but the convulsions of the body of nature, terrific as they are, there would be a chance for some to endure them without becoming so thoroughly unmanned. But the chief consternation arises, not simply from the outward facts, but from the unwelcome conclusions which they force upon the soul. The physical manifestations may be in the line of physical laws, and in no way contrary to them; but whether miraculous or not, they are so terrific and Divine, that they compel the most atheistic to see in them the hands, and arms, and utterances of a Being transcendently greater still, and to feel the demonstration in their souls that He has verily risen up in the fierceness of just indignation against long neglect and defiance of His authority. It is not that nature has ceased to be herself, or that the principles of her activities have been repealed, that overwhelms them, but the resistless proof that all her awful potencies, now in such terrific motion, are God's direct powers, aroused and inflamed with His dreadful anger, and charged as heralds and executioners of His almighty wrath. It is not the shaking, the obscured sun, the bloody moon, the falling stars, the recoiling heavens, the moving mountains, so much as the moral truths they flash into the spirit, to wit, that God is on the throne, that sin is a reality, that judgment is come, and that every guilty one must now face an angry Creator. It is not nature's bewildering commotions, for they would willingly have the falling mountains cover them, if that would shelter them from what is much more in their view, and far more dreadful to them. What they speak of is, God upon the throne, the fear of His face, the day of reckoning, and the wrath of the Lamb. These are more than all the horrors of a universe in convulsions. These are the daggers in their hearts—the thunderbolts that rend and rive their souls—the fires that kindle the flames of hell within them.

5. And how pitiable and absurd the expedients to which they are driven! Many an opportunity for prayer had they neglected. Always had they contemned such humiliating employment. It did not suit their ideas of dignity, or their theories. But now they pray, and have a grand concert of prayer, in which kings and mighty ones join with the meanest and lowest. They had often laughed and sneered at praying men; but now they all pray. Some prostrate in the dust, some on their knees in dens and caves, some clinging to the trees, and all shrieking out in unison their terror-moved entreaties. O, imbecile people! When prayer would have been availing, they scorned and detested it as mean and useless; and now, that it is futile, they go at it with a will.

Still more absurd is the direction in which they address their prayers. Once they considered it folly that man should call on the living God; but now they pray to dead rocks! Once they thought it philosophic to deny that He who made the ear could hear prayers, or that He with whom is the Spirit, and whose is the power, could answer them; but now they supplicate the deaf and helpless mountains!

And yet weaker and more insane is the import of their prayers and efforts. Beautifully has the Psalmist sung: "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." (Ps. 139:7-13.) Omniscience and omnipresence are among the natural attributes of God. The very things before these people's eyes should have been enough to teach them this. And yet, philosophers as they are, their proposal is to conceal themselves from the Almighty, and so elude His wrath! Often had shelter and peaceful security been offered them in the mercies of the loving Saviour, and as often had they despised and rejected them; but now the silly souls would take the miserable rocks for saviours! O, the foolishness of men who think it folly to serve God! "He that fleeth of them, shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them, shall not be delivered. Though they dig into hell," saith the Lord, "thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down; and though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence." (Amos. 9:1-3.)

These kings and mighty ones of the earth had highly estimated the terrors of death, and tried to restrain and terrify men with fears of them. As shown in the preceding seal, they had been persecutors of the saints, and shed their blood to silence their testimony. Yet, what they then thought so awful, they are now themselves willing and anxious to suffer; yea, and to go down into everlasting nothingness, as a happy alternative to what they find coming upon them. "They say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb! "O, miserable extremity to which guilt brings men at last! There are those whom these judgments shall not thus overwhelm. Hid in Jesus, and His sheltering grace, they are secure against all such dismay. But "the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low." (Isa. 2:12.)

Friends and brethren, what a mercy that that day is not yet upon us! There is a Rock to which we still may fly and pray, with hope of security in its wide-open clefts. It is the Rock of Ages. There are mountains to which we may yet betake ourselves, and be forever safe from all the dread convulsions which await the world. They are the mountains of salvation in Christ Jesus. I believe that I am addressing some who have betaken themselves to them. Brethren, "hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering; for He is faithful that promised." (Heb. 10:23.) But others are still lingering in the plains of Sodom, who need to take this warning to heart as they never yet have done. O ye travellers to the judgment, seek ye the Lord while He may be found, and call upon Him while He is near! And may God in His mercy hide us all from the condemnation that awaits an unbelieving world!

Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly;

While the billows near me roll,

While the tempest still is high;

Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,

Till the storm of life be past,

Safe into the haven guide,

Oh, receive my soul at last!

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