(Revelation 8:6-12)

PREPARATION OF THE ANGELS—ADJUSTMENT OF THE ORDER OF PROCEEDING—FIRST TRUMPET—A TEMPEST OF HAIL, FIRE, AND BLOOD—CONTRADICTORY VIEWS OF SYMBOLISTIC INTERPRETERS—NO CERTAINTY BUT IN THE LITERAL SENSE—SECOND TRUMPET—A METEOR STRIKES THE SEA, TURNS IT TO BLOOD, DESTROYS LIVING THINGS AND SHIPPING—A LITERAL PROPHECY—THIRD TRUMPET—A METEOR OR COMET FALLS ON THE EARTH, POISONS THE WATERS, AND CAUSES MANY TO PERISH—ALSO LITERAL—FOURTH TRUMPET—THE SUN, MOON AND STARS OBSCURED—ALSO LITERAL.

Rev. 8:6-12. (Revised Text.)—And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves that they might sound.

And the first sounded; and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and it was cast into the earth; and the third of the earth was burned, and the third of the trees was burned, and all green grass was burned.

And the second angel sounded; and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third of the sea became blood; and the third of the creatures in the sea, the things which had lives [Gr. souls], died; and the third of the ships was destroyed.

And the third angel sounded; and there fell out of the heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon a third of the rivers, and upon the springs of the waters; and the name of the star is called wormwood; and the third of the waters was turned into wormwood; and many of men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.

And the fourth angel sounded; and the third of the sun was smitted, and the third of the moon, and the third of the stars, so that the third of them should be darkened, and the day should not shine for the third of it, and the night likewise.

We have reached a point in the history of the Apocalypse, at which everything stands in solemn readiness for those final blasts of judgment which bring the grand consummation. The last seal is broken. Heaven is in suspense to see the result. The prayers of all the saints have come up with acceptance before God, who has promised to avenge them. The coals and ashes of holy indignation have dropped from the golden censer to lodge upon the doomed world. In short, the time has come for the action of the great day to be hurried to its completion. May the Lord Almighty give us grace to contemplate the awful scenes foreshown, as becomes both the subject and ourselves!

I. THE PREPARATION.

"And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves that they might sound."

Most of our apocalyptic interpreters tell us that "the angels preparing themselves to sound, signifies the difference in posture observable between one carelessly holding a trumpet by his side, and the bending of the arm, the erecting of the figure, the inflating of the lungs, and swelling of the lips and cheeks, as the trumpet is pressed firmly against the mouth." To me this appears a sorry way of dealing with grave records of such momentous things. It is plainly said that these angels sounded their trumpets. From this we know, in advance, that they lifted the instruments to their lips and blew into them. All such accidents of posture and gesture are already necessarily implied, Besides, many of these interpreters extend these trumpets over long series of years; and if each angel put himself on a strain for a blast before either sounded, the last had his cheeks and lungs inflated very long before his turn came to sound! We had better exercise a little consideration, and not make these solemn things ludicrous by the way we handle them. The rapt apostle had greater things to engage him than to be dwelling on such puerilities. There was occasion also for a more significant preparation.

Not all seven of these angels were to sound at once. Mighty events of varied character were also to be induced by their several soundings. It was necessary, therefore, that there should be some prearrangement, both as to the order of time for each to sound, and the particular class of results each one's sounding should control. Their soundings were not haphazard things; neither were these sublime archangels mere machines, moving like puppets, only as they were moved by a superior will. No attentive reader can fail to observe a complete and forestudied system and order in these trumpets and their successive effects. No two of them are alike, and yet there is a gradual rising, one over the other, to the end. One touches the ground, the trees, and the green grass. Another touches the sea, the ships, and the creatures in the sea. A third touches the rivers and the springs of water. A fourth touches the sun, moon, and stars. A fifth breaks open the door of separation between earth and hell. A sixth unlooses the dreadful army of horses and horsemen, the seven thunders, and the mighty struggle and murder of the two witnesses. And the last brings on "the battle of the great day of God Almighty." There is a particular distinction between the first four and the last three; and again between the last of the three and the two which immediately precede it.

To refer all this to mere accident, or to the artistic skill of the narrator of the events, is unreasonable. Such system and order do not come of nothing, and a faithful recorder must enter events as they occur. Great intelligence and prearrangement are manifest in the transactions themselves, apart from any art of the writer who describes them. Either, then, this was the work of the seven angels or that of the supreme Mind. And as we cannot conceive of such sublime beings as these seven archangels, going forward with the control of such mighty operations, without also exercising their own personal intelligence as to the manner of their proceeding; when it is said that they "prepared themselves that they might sound," we are not to think of the mere mechanical accidents pertaining to the act of sounding a trumpet, but of a deliberative adjustment among themselves of the place and subject which each one was to take in the work.

We thus have a very significant hint respecting angelic ministrations, to wit: that the affairs of men and nations are much more under the influence of the thinking and deliberation of angels, and wear much more of the impress of angelic management, than we are accustomed to suppose. Even men, in the narrow spheres and powers assigned to mortals, have constant occasion to think, deliberate, consult, and judge. It is, therefore, reasonable to believe that angels, and particularly the seven archangels, in their high places and with their sublime intelligence, do also have need to confer, deliberate, and arrange for their proceedings, especially in cases so extraordinary as this. It was nothing less than the closing up of the affairs of a world that was here committed to them; and they were all seven to be equally concerned in the tremendous administrations. The word ετοιμἀζω, which is used to describe their ready-making, is also often employed to denote predeterminations of what is to be done, and the settling of appointments and designs before they are carried into effect. And it is but natural and just, and harmonizes best with the character of both the agents and the business assigned to them, to interpret their making of themselves ready as referring to their mutual adjustment of the method by which they would conduct the awful transactions.

II. THE SOUNDING OF THE FIRST TRUMPET.

"And the first sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood and it was cast into the earth; and the third of the earth was burned, and the third of the trees was burned, and all green grass was burned."

Here is the first touch of what fell from the censer of the Priest-Angel. I take the language as it stands. This book does not give things veiled, but unveiled. It is the Apocalypse, the uncovering. The results here described are heralded by the sound of a trumpet; what is published by a trumpet is no longer a secret. The phenomena are of a very stupendous sort; but the actors are Archangels, the occasion is the day of judgment, and the business is the closing up of the history of a doomed world. In such a case we may well look for wonders. God has also declared His purpose to renew the miracles of Egypt, and to do "marvellous things" like unto what He did in the days of Israel's deliverance. (See Micah 7:15; Jer. 23:7, 8.) The plagues of Egypt were literal realities. They were miracles of judgment, such as have never been since on earth. And if it is the design of God to repeat them on a larger scale, or to do again what at all corresponds to that which He then did, the world has yet to witness just such scenes as are literally described under these trumpets. And "as it was in the day that Israel came up out of Egypt," so it is in what John beheld under the sounding of this first trumpet. Then "the Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail, and fire, mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt, since it became a nation. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt, all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field." (Ex. 9:23-28.) Here we have a corresponding visitation, only the fire is more destructive, and there is the further element of blood mingled with the fire and hail.

The whole picture is that of a tremendous tempest of hailstones, lightnings, and bloody products of the infuriated elements. Blood-red rains and blood-red snows are not unknown to the world. We occasionally hear of them. On the 17th of August, 1819, Captain Ross saw the mountains at Baffin's Bay covered for eight miles with blood-red snow, many feet in depth. Saussare found it on Mount St. Bernard, in 1778. Ramond found it on the Pyrenees, and Summerfield in Norway, and others have told of it in other places. So blood-rain has more than once fallen. It is recorded by Cicero, that word was brought to the Roman Senate, on one occasion, that it had rained blood; also that the river Atratus had flowed with a bloody stream. (De Div. 2:27.) Slight falls of this kind have occurred in the Cape Verd Islands, at Lyons, at Genoa, and in the southwest of our own country, to the great alarm of the people of the vicinity. But whether the like of what John describes ever happened before or not, God has said, concerning the great day: "I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire." (Joel 2:30.) And the manner in which He will do it is here unveiled. A storm of hail, and fire, and bloody interminglings, shall fall upon and envelop the world.

The effects are correspondingly dreadful. At an earlier stage, under the sixth seal, the four angels at the four corners of the earth holding the four winds, were charged not to injure the earth, nor the trees, till the servants of God were sealed. That sealing being accomplished, the prohibition ceases, the spirit of storms is let loose, and the earth and the trees are hurt. Bloody hail and fire pour upon the world with such fury that the third of the earth is burned. Our English version says nothing of the burning of the earth. It speaks only of trees and grass. The best manuscripts specify the earth also. Modern critics agree that the omission is unwarranted. "The third of the earth was burned"—set on fire and charred by the fierce lightnings of heaven, and a corresponding destruction was, of course, wrought among buildings, flocks, herds, and human life.

"The third" is mentioned, not with rigid strictness, as absolutely just that proportion, but, as we would say in general terms, one-third of the earth was burned. And so also "the third of the trees." The Egyptian plague "smote and brake every tree of the field; "this destroys many more in the aggregate, because the visitation is so much more widespread, but it does not consume all. It carries fearful havoc among the forests, orchards, and timber-lands of the earth, but still the major part of the trees escape. Not so, however, with the grass and the more tender portions of vegetation. The Egyptian plague destroyed "every herb of the field," and it is the same in this case. "All green

grass was burned." A scene of distressing and far-reaching desolation is thus foreshown, in which a large portion of the earth's surface is charred with fire, many towns, cities, forests, and plantations reduced to ashes, every field and meadow stripped of its growing crops, and bloody and putrid blackness spread over all the smitten world.

But most interpreters object to the taking of this as a literal description. If their objection is valid, they must be able to show a different meaning, and one on which we may reasonably rest with greater certainty. If earth does not mean earth, then what does it mean? And if earth means earth, then the trees must mean trees, and the grass grass. If not, why not? And if trees and grass do not mean trees and grass, the burden is upon those who so affirm to furnish the evidence of some other meaning. But, alas, for such attempts! Wordsworth says the trees mean princes and great men, and grass the glory and power of men. Lord says the trees mean stronger men, and the grass the young, the feeble, and the aged. Hengstenberg and Williams say the trees mean great men, and the grass people generally. Wetstein says the trees mean apostles and great doctors, and the grass common Christians. Durham says the earth means the visible Church, the trees what seems most strong in it, and the grass its lesser excellencies. The truth is, if earth, trees, and grass do not mean earth, trees, and grass, no man can tell what they mean. Letting go the literal signification of the record, we launch out upon an endless sea of sheer conjecture, turn the whole Apocalypse into an incomprehensible riddle, and force the conclusion that God was mistaken when He named it the lifting off of the veil; nay, that, if it is a revelation, it has not yet become manifest what that revelation is, and never will, by the light which we now possess.

A large number of writers on this book agree, indeed, that the downfall of the Roman power in the West is at least the most prominent subject of the trumpets: and, as far as that downfall is included in the great day of judgment, and, as far as one judgment is a type of another, they are correct, but no further. Referring these foreshowings to the decline and fall of the Roman empire, there are not two expositors who concur as to the distribution of events under the several trumpets. Each has a different theory, and each finds the same particular predictions fulfilled in things the most diverse in character and the most widely separated in time. And if we must go to symbol and figure for the meaning, I find one theory about as respectable and well sustained as the other. It is mainly fancy and guesswork from first to last, as full of self-contradiction as destitute of solid foundation. Thus, Elliott, who has written with so much learning and pains on the subject, finds the fulfilment of this first trumpet in the wars of Alaric the Goth and Rhadagaisus the Vandal, against the Western Roman Empire. But this gives us two storms instead of the one which John beheld, and the blood of men on earth instead of the bloody substance which the record describes as falling from the sky, and fixes on events which suit as well for either of the first four trumpets instead of something as distinctive and peculiar as this trumpet is from all the rest. And so the thing works in every other instance. The law of departure from the direct sense of the record, is the law of uncertainty, of irreconcilable contradictions, of the substitution of human vagaries for the clear revelations of God, and there is no remedy for the chaos of opinions that obtains under it. As well might we look for the laws of symbolization to interpret the plagues of Egypt of the discovery and settlement of America, as to find such laws for the interpretation of the seals, trumpets, and vials of this book of anything but the great day of God Almighty. But, carrying them forward where they belong, and where God himself has so explicitly put them,—to that day beyond all other days of literal realities and astounding marvels,—there is no more hindrance to the literal acceptance of what is written here, than to such an acceptance of what is written concerning the life and deeds of Jesus, or concerning the acts of His apostles, whilst it gives us solid ground to stand on, and involves us in no bewildering uncertainties and discomfiting self-contradictions.

I must, therefore, take these descriptions in the only really ascertainable sense of them, and insist that a mighty storm of hail and fire mingled with blood means a storm of hail and fire mingled with blood; that earth, trees, and all green grass means earth, trees, and all green grass; and that the burning, and scorching, and destruction means burning, scorching, and destruction. And, after wading through piles of volumes intended to prove and demonstrate the contrary, I come back to this, as fully persuaded, as I am convinced that the Bible is of God, that there can be no interpretation of the Apocalypse, as an intelligible revelation, on any other principle. There are, indeed, symbols and figures in it, as in all other portions of the Scriptures. But when they occur here, as in every other place, the distinct intimations to that effect are given; and, in all other instances, we are to interpret precisely the same as in any other piece of serious writing intended for the instruction and enlightenment of men.

III. THE SOUNDING OF THE SECOND TRUMPET.

"And the second angel sounded; and, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third of the sea became blood; and the third of the creatures in the sea, the things which had lives, died; and the third of the ships was destroyed."

Here is one of the hints I speak of as indicating that a thing is not to be literally taken. The image of a burning mountain is before the writer. But it is not literally a mountain; it is only something having the general appearance of a mountain; and he plainly tells us so. He saw—we—as it were a mountain. Of course, then, we are to take it, not as a real mountain, but as something resembling a mountain. A certain writer insists that the plague under this trumpet is not to be taken literally, because a mountain falling into the sea could never turn it into blood. But John does not say it was a mountain. He says that it was something that looked like a burning mountain. Exactly what it was, he could not better tell us, except that its effect upon the waters of the sea was, that it turned them into blood. An ordinary mountain would not do this; but that falling, fiery mass, which had the appearance of a burning mountain, did it.

Some conceive of this fiery mass as a volcano, but neither is this the exact image. John says nothing of a mountain vomiting fire, but of a mountain burning with fire, which might be a volcanic mountain, or it might not. When God descended on Sinai, "the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness" (Deut. 4:11); but there is no evidence that it was a volcanic eruption. The idea of John's language is rather that of a great mountainous mass of matter falling from the sky, clothed in seething, thundering, and flashing flames, and dashing into the ocean. The whole image is meteoric, rather than volcanic.

The plunging of this awful fiery mass into the sea, affects it wonderfully. It turns the waves to blood. And if any are disposed to doubt the possibility of such a thing, let them turn to the account of the exode of Israel from Egypt, where it is written that Moses "lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants, and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood." (Ex. 7:20.) In the Psalms also (105:29), it is written: "He turned their waters into blood;" and again (78:44): "He turned their rivers into blood, and their floods, that they could not drink." It was fresh water in that case, and it is sea or salt water in this; but if God could work such changes by the staff of Moses, what is to hinder him from producing like changes, even on all the waters of the ocean, by means of this fiery mass, as it were a burning mountain? And if the one was literal, as all admit, why not the other, although upon a mightier scale, corresponding to the momentousness of the great day?

Suppose, however, that we follow the common course of expositors, and say that this whole matter is figurative or symbolical; then what? Some understand the mountain to mean heresy; the sea, the Church with its baptismal waters; its change to blood, the effect of deadly error; the death of the fishes of the sea, the perdition of souls; the destruction of the ships, the overthrow of churches. Others say the fiery mountain is Satan; the sea, the nations; its change into blood and the dying of the fishes, the persecution and slaughter of Christians; the wreck of the ships, the extinction of congregations. Others tell us that this fiery mountain was Genseric with his Vandals, forced from their native seat by the Huns, and plunging through France and Spain into Africa, conquering the Carthaginians, settling themselves upon the conquered territory, and thence harassing the neighbouring islands and shores of the Mediterranean. Still others affirm that the sea is the sea of Galilee, figuratively considered; the fiery mountain, Vespasian; the fishes, the Jews; the ships, the cities of Palestine. And again others interpret the picture of the overthrow of Jerusalem and the temple, and the dissolution of the Jewish polity; the dying of the fishes, the relapses of men from Christianity to Gentilism; the loss of the ships, the subversion of synagogues and churches. Nor is the list yet exhausted. To some, the sea is pure doctrine; the mountain, aspiring prelates; the fire, their ambition; the discoloration of the waters, the introduction of false doctrine; the fishes, the lower orders of ecclesiastics and monks; the ships, the bearers of the Gospel. To others, the mountain is Rome; its burning, the conflagration of that city by Alaric; the destruction of the ships, the plunder of its wealth. Still others see in the record, a symbol of the ravages by Attila. And I only wonder that no one has discovered that it denotes the settlement of the Mormons in Salt Lake Territory! The simple truth is, that if it does not mean what it says, as men ordinarily use language, no man can tell what it does mean; and the opinion of one is just as good, and just as bad, as that of another.

I, therefore, take it as it is written, because there is no other way of taking it which yields any certain or reliable sense. What do we want with Vespasian, Alaric, Rhadagaisus, Attila, Genseric, Romans, Goths, Vandals, Arians, prelates, or the devil, when the inspired writer tells us it was a fiery meteoric mass,—an aerial mountain,—great and towering, precipitated from the atmosphere into the sea, as one of the great wonders of the day of judgment? Men do but rave and trifle and undertake to make a Bible which God has not made, when they spend their time, and learning, and ingenuity trying to persuade themselves and the world that it was something else than John says it was.

This burning mass is plunged into "the sea." It would seem as if some particular sea was meant. If so, most likely the Mediterranean Sea, around which the greatest recorded events of the world and of the Church have been enacted, and which is the central sea of all history, both sacred and profane. Its very name marks it as the middle of the earth. The result is, that the third of it becomes blood—poisonously bloody—so that a third of the living things in the sea perish.

It would seem, also, as if tempestuous commotion of the elements is to attend this awful precipitation. Both the vastness and the fiery condition of the mass ejected into the sea, naturally suggests such effects. Hence, "the third of the ships was destroyed," burned, sunk, or dashed ashore.

And all this finds place also in some of the plain, old unsymbolic predictions concerning the day of the Lord. Fishes constitute one of God's precious gifts to man. They were among the principal food of Jesus, and were the subjects of some of His most marvellous miracles. And, in punishment of the sins of men, it is but reasonable to expect the fishes of the sea to be smitten, as well as the trees and the fruits of the earth. Hence, in foretelling the Divine judgments, Hosea said: "The fishes of the sea also shall be taken away." (4:1-3.) So the Lord, also, said by Zephaniah (1:3), "I will consume the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea." Isaiah further declares: "The day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is high and lofty... and upon all the ships of Tarshish." (Isa. 2:16.) And here, under the second trumpet, the blessed John beholds exactly how these predictions are to be fulfilled.

IV. THE SOUNDING OF THE THIRD TRUMPET.

"And the third angel sounded, and there fell out of the heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third of the rivers, and upon the springs of the waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third of the waters was turned into wormwood; and many of men died from the waters, because they were made bitter."

Here is another marvellous meteoric phenomenon; perhaps a comet striking the earth. But nobody seems to be quite willing to take it for what John says it was. Interpreters tell us, that a star denotes an eminent teacher or angel of the Church. They refer us for proof of this, to the first chapter of this book. But there is one important link lacking in this argument, as applied to the case before us. There Christ himself says, that "the seven stars" beheld by the seer, denote "the angels of the seven churches;" but here He says no such thing; nor is there any proof that the Church is at all in question. This star falls out of heaven, but there is no evidence whatever that the Church is heaven. Besides, so great a star of the Church, in such lonely distinction, could only be Christ himself, who never falls out of the Church, whose name is not Wormwood, and who does not poison the fountains and rivers of the earth by His teachings. When the Scriptures tell us that a thing is a symbol, we are to take it as such; but when they give no intimation that a thing is other than literal, there is no warrant for making a symbol or figure of it.

But, if this star denotes an apostate teacher, who is that teacher? Some say Simon Magus, Menander, Cerinthus; some, Manes; some, Novatus; some, Montanus; some, Arius; some, Pelagius; some, Origen; some, Mahomet; and one with about as much reason as the other. Some, however, tell us that it does not mean an apostate teacher at all, but a warlike leader. Then, what one? Grotius, Hammond, and Rosenmuller answer: Some actor in the Jewish war, as Eleazar, Josephus, or the like. Others answer, Genseric; others Attila; others, whole successions of bloody devastators;—and nobody knows who; for, with this mode of interpretation, the vision will fit one as well as the other.

If Attila, King of the Huns, is the star, as the leading modern expositors affirm, then there are some very important questions which yet remain to be solved. What was "the heaven" out of which he fell? What was his fall? How did he burn as a torch? Are the Danube and the Rhine, along which he operated, "the third of the rivers?" How did he embitter the fountains as distinct from the rivers, and make both fountains and rivers bitter like himself? How was his name called Wormwood? Were the deaths under him literal or spiritual deaths? If literal, did they die of the bitterness of the waters? And, if spiritual, did Attila produce any moral mortality among men? O, the sloughs and bogs into which people plunge themselves when they let go the plain and direct sense of what is written! Has not symbol and allegory been tried about long enough on these momentous plagues of the day of judgment?

Apart from his stilted system of symbolization, Lord finds the description of the apostle very plain, and reproduces it in a way which well exhibits its literal import. "The star, obviously, was not a solid globe, but a thin, transparent meteor [or comet], which, as it swept along near the surface and sunk to the ground, still left the objects it enveloped perceptible to the apostle, and was soon absorbed by the waters and the earth. He beheld the rivers and fountains still running, discerned a change wrought in them by the meteor, and saw that it was the new element infused into them that rendered them deadly to many who drank of them."

A name is assigned to this meteor, not as though it had previously been known or should become known by this name, but in a way descriptive of its qualities and effects. Properly designated, "the name of the star is called Wormwood;" or, according to some manuscripts, emphatically, "the wormwood." Wormwood, or absinthe, is a bitter, intoxicating, and poisonous herb. Used freely, it produces convulsions, paralysis, and death. And this star is appropriately named "the Absinthe," as the embodiment of the very quintessence of all wormwood. It is bitterness itself—the poisonous bitterness of absinthe.

And this bitterness is communicated to whatever it touches. It falls upon the third of the rivers, and upon the springs of waters. It sinks into the earth and impregnates the fountains and the wells. Lord suggests that it falls upon the Alps, from whose melting glaciers so many rivers and fountains take their rise. At any rate, it touches the sources of many waters, and turns them into bitterness. Such a thing is by no means impossible. On the 21st of March, 1823, in one of the Aleutian Islands there was a great volcanic explosion, and, as one of the results, the river water assumed the colour of beer, and was so extremely bitter as to be unfit for use. God is at no loss for means to effect His ends. And if one meteor could turn the waters of the sea to blood, another may as readily turn the waters of the rivers and wells to the deadly bitterness of absinthe. Nay, something of this sort is indicated in the ancient prophecies, where we read: "Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein, but have walked after the imagination of their own heart, therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink." (Jer. 9:13-15.) Even if this was figuratively fulfilled upon the apostate Jews, we are still warranted in counting on a more literal fulfilment in that great day which is to repeat and bring to their fullest consummation all the judgments that have ever gone before it.

The result of this embittering of the waters is fearful distress on account of the absence of wholesome drink, and great mortality among men.

V. THE SOUNDING OF THE FOURTH TRUMPET.

"And the fourth angel sounded, and the third of the sun was smitten, and the third of the moon, and the third of the stars, so that the third of them should be darkened, and the day should not shine the third of it, and the night likewise."

We have seen the judgments of God going forth on the land, with its trees and herbage—on the sea with its fishes and its ships—on the rivers and springs—and everywhere spreading disaster, suffering, and death. This trumpet carries us above, to portents and afflictions from the heavenly bodies. Jesus has told us, "there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars" (Luke 21:25); and here John beholds some of them. We have had some of them before, but they increase and intensify as the end draws near. We shall see more of them hereafter.

But what are we to understand by the sun, moon, and stars? Ask a child, and it will tell you; but ask our Apocalyptic interpreters, and their answers are as various as their names, and all they have to say is nothing but loose conjecture and uncertainty. Grotius says they are the cities of Galilee, and the people of the Jews, destroyed by Vespasian. Hammond says the sun is the Jewish temple; the moon, Jerusalem; the stars, its population; their obscuration, the taking of the city by Titus. Brightman says the sun is the Bible; the moon, its doctrine; the stars, the ministers of the Church; their obscuration, the persecution of the African Church by the Vandals. Vitringa says the obscuration of the sun is the decay of the imperial government from Valens to the fall of Augustulus; of the moon and stars, the false doctrines and corrupt manners of the patriarchs and bishops after the time of Constantine. Wordsworth sees in it "a prophecy of a great prevalence of errors, defections, apostasies, and confusions in Christendom, such as abounded in the seventh century." And Danbuz, Elliott, Lord, Cumming, Barnes, &c., consider it a picture of the subversion of the Western imperial government and its dependencies, and the setting up of the new rule of the Heruli under Odoacer. Will any one in his senses allow that all these can be true? or that that can be a just way of dealing with the word of God, which gives us such wide-ranging diversity, and about equal reason for either theory?

The application of this trumpet to Odoacer is the favourite modern way of disposing of it. Yet Barnes confessedly adopts it, only because the system on which he interprets the foregoing trumpets leaves him no other alternative, notwithstanding he cannot make the events and the prophecy correspond, except in the vaguest and most general manner. Lord embraces it because "there is no other event that in the slightest degree meets the conditions of the symbol." And so with the rest; though, even as a symbol, this trumpet no more fits the case of Odoacer and the Heruli, than it fits the case of Vespasian or Titus, Napoleon Bonaparte or George Washington. Look at it. John beheld the third of the sun, moon, and stars smitten, and their light one-third diminished, whilst they retained their places, and for two-thirds continued the same as before; but Odoacer made an utter end of the old imperial government of the West, and of all its dependencies, and set up an entirely new sun, moon, and stars in the political heavens. Here is a discrepancy which is eternally irreconcilable with the record, and which, without noting others, is fatal to the theory. And if the system of symbolic interpretation forces us to accept as the fulfilment of holy prediction what is so fundamentally at variance with it, then there remains but one rational alternative: either to surrender our warfare with rationalism and infidelity, or to renounce and denounce that symbolic system as inadequate and false, which it really is, even from foundation to summit. With all the great names by which it is adorned, I charge it, before God and men, with having obscured and sealed up from the view of the Church, some of the plainest and most important revelations from heaven, and hold it responsible for nearly all the uncertainty, doubt, and darkness which hang over this sublime and awful Apocalypse. And as surely as this Book is what God says it is, and as certainly as sun, moon, and stars mean sun, moon, and stars, just so surely this fourth trumpet no more refers to Odoacer, or any other men, events, or disasters of the past, than it does to the writers who have so applied it. It is a judgment scene of the great day that is foreshown, and it is a fearful and disastrous obscuration of the sources of light and heat to our world, so that sun, moon, and stars will shine with only the third of their force, disturbing the seasons, hindering the ripening of fruits and harvests, and filling the world with chilliness and sickening gloom. The same was prophesied by Isaiah (13:9), where it is said: "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. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light, the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible." (Compare Jer. 4:23, 28; Ezek. 32:7, 8; Joel 2:10, 30, 31; 3:15; Amos 5:20; Zeph. 1:14-16; Matt. 24:29.) Nor can we consider this unlikely or improbable, when we call to mind the plague of "thick darkness," for three days, which attended God's judgments upon Egypt.

Thus, then, we have the significance of the first four trumpets. The first angel sounds, and a fearful tempest of hail and fire, mingled with blood, follows. The third of the land is burned, and the third of the trees, and all green grass;—a judgment upon the world for its wickednesses.

The second angel sounds, and a great meteoric mass, like unto a mountain burning with fire, is plunged into the sea, turning the third of its waters to blood, killing the third of all living things in the sea, and utterly destroying the third of the shipping on the sea;—another sore judgment upon the guilty and God-defying children of men.

The third angel sounds, and a great starlike meteor falls out of the sky, blazing like a torch, and is absorbed by the earth and waters, embittering the third of the rivers, and the wells, and fountains, so that large portions of mankind die because of the poison it imparts to the waters;—another sore judgment upon the wicked dwellers upon the earth.

The fourth angel sounds, and calamity befalls the luminaries of the sky. The sun, moon, and stars are one-third obscured, making the days' gloominess and the darkness of the nights still darker, with all the attendant distresses of such a beclouded and chilly state of things;—a further judgment upon the generations of the unsanctified.

And yet these are only the preliminaries and preludes of still intenser woes to follow. Ah, yes; sin has a voice that is heard in heaven. Though sentence against an evil work be not executed speedily, it will be executed at last. Jezebel may flourish in her iniquities for many years, but, finally, the horses trample her body in the streets, and the dogs of Jezreel gnaw and crunch her royal bones. Long was the old world left to drive its crimes, jeer at Noah's odd notions, and fling defiance into the face of God; but presently the earth broke down beneath their feet, and their lifeless bodies dashed upon each other amid the waves of an ocean world! The trampled law will assert its rightful honour, and Christ will not endure the smiting, taunts, and wrongs of Pilate's hall forever. And when these trumpets once give out their clangour, the vibrations will run through the universe, and everything created for human blessedness shall turn into a source of disaster and trouble to them that know not God and obey not the Gospel of Christ.

Day of anger, day of wonder!

When the world is driven asunder,

Smote with fire, and blood, and thunder!

And will any one who hears these solemn things go away from the contemplation of them, not caring whether he is involved in these plagues or not? There is now a free salvation from all of them offered through faith in Christ Jesus. Hid and housed in Him and His redeeming grace, not one of these calamities shall ever touch us. Who, then, can reconcile himself to retire from the exhibitions of this hour, without having his heart and mind made up, God being his Helper, never more to neglect or give over his devout endeavours to find the only shelter from the miseries of that terrible day?

King of Majesty tremendous,

Who dost free salvation send us!

Well of Mercy! O befriend us.

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