of evil were prepared for a specific period, for the hour of temptation and the day of judgment,* for a period in the language of this prophecy, described as both a month, and a year (eviavrov) the Jewish month being thirty days, and the Jewish year being 360 days, this would make 390 literal days, meaning in the symbolic use of days, 390 years. This period corresponds to the course of the Turkish empire. In 1063, at the head of the Turkish cavalry, Arp Arslan passed the Euphrates, and in 390 years from that time, that is, in 1453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. From 1453 to 1843, is 390 years more, and in that year began a correspondence which has issued in a marked evidence of the close of the Turkish woe.† Indeed everywhere the falling condition of the Turkish power becomes more and more evident.

We have a type of this period, full of valuable illustration of it, in the book of Ezekiel. That prophet was required, as a type of Israel, to lay on his side 390 days, and was told a day is appointed for a year. He was to

* See the approved reading in Matthæus, eis Tny wpay kaι els

την ημέραν.

It is fully admitted, that the evidence of the double continuance of the period of 390 years, is not so strong as in the case of the period of 150 years in the Saracen woe. But the analogy of the two periods is apparent, as is the height of the Turkish woe at the capture of Constantinople and its subsequent decline. There is also a corresponding growth thus in the period of the woes of the wicked. The first woe 300 years; the second woe 780 years: and the third woe 1000 years.

do this, to show to his people, the approaching fall of the temple. The period reaches from the accession of Rehoboam, when Judah and Israel separated, and became distinct kingdoms, to the fall of the temple, 976 to 587. It thus is a striking type of similar events, and a similar period in the Christian Church. This second woe, as a friend observes, commencing soon after the grand schism of the East and the West, includes the overthrow of the Eastern empire by the destructive inroads of the Turks, the successors of the Assyrian armies which overthrew Israel.'

6

There is an evident progress of greatness, solemnity, and duration in this woe. The figures are of a larger and more terrific character. Instead of locusts with teeth of lions; instead of breast-plates of iron, they have breast-plates of fire, and of jacinth, and of brimstone. Instead of tormenting, and that for five months, they have power to slay the third part of men, and that for a month and a year. The object of this second woe is the extinction of political power in a specific part, called the third part of men; that is, in the third universal empire, the Grecian, which had been predicted as the third empire by the prophet Daniel.

The period of their rise and fall thus includes twice 390 years, and comes down to the present time. For this lengthened period have the Turks oppressed the Eastern empire, and been a bitter woe to Christendom as the persecutors of fallen and apostate Christian Churches.

Their whole character and course fully and exactly corresponds to the figurative description of them given in the prophecy. They had vast military power, chiefly consisting in cavalry, and they were animated by intense zeal for their false creed. In their conquests, and especially in that of Constantinople, the then recentlydiscovered invention of gunpowder, corresponding to the letter of the prophecy, was successfully employed by them. By these three were the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. It was foretold also, their tails are like unto serpents, and had heads, and with these they do hurt. There is not only here pointed out their false teaching, the prophet that speaketh lies, he is the tail, but it is singular that the dignity of the Turkish Beys is estimated according to the number of horses' tails, tied to a staff, carried before them, as if God would here distinctly mark out who were intended, and give in his overruling providence a visible and literal help to the right application of what he had so long before foreseen and foretold.

In the midst of this judgment from the Turkish woe, extinguishing the political power of the Eastern, and spreading alarm over the Western empires, though we are expressly told, that the Western Churches repented not of their idolatries, yet we have also a distinct prediction, that it should please God our Saviour to visit his Church with fresh mercies, and pour out afresh from heaven the light of Divine truth, and to send forth

his word, open to all men, in its purity. This God graciously accomplished by the blessed and ever gratefully to be remembered Reformation in the sixteenth century. We have an account of it in the tenth chapter of the Revelation. Through the whole indeed of the fifth and sixth trumpets faithful witnesses of Jesus, testifying of him, were prophecying. Just before the Reformation, however, their testimony was completely silenced for three years and a half (prophetically described three days and a half) till the resurrection of Divine truth in 1517.* Then a mighty angel descended as it were from heaven, and the little book of Scripture, little in contrast with the secret sealed book of Divine Providence, was laid open, and was given to the Western Churches, and the glorious Gospel of the grace of God preached again before many peoples and nations and tongues and kings. This state of the Church is described through the greater part of the eleventh chapter of Revelation. The French Revolution in 1793 seems described in the following words :—the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of names of men seven thousand, and the remnant were affrighted and gave glory to the God of heaven.† We have here the entire uprooting

* See Mr. Elliott's valuable illustration of this part of the Apocalypse.

We may often observe in symbolic prophecies, an outward visible token of the deeper and full meaning; and it is singular

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of the institutions of France, the proudest of the ten European kingdoms, as the leading event before the closing of the sixth trumpet. The revived spirit of real religion connected with it, has been evident in the religious societies that have arisen from that time. Then follows, as the next great characteristic event, the second woe is past, and behold the third woe cometh quickly.

THE SEVENTH TRUMPET has not yet been sounded, and the events predicted under it have not yet taken place. It is the third woe trumpet, consisting of the open judgment of God's enemies, under the various names given to them in prophecy, of Babylon the great city, the beast, the false prophet, the kings of the earth, and the dragon, as fully unfolded, Rev. xviii.-xx, These judgments, and the corresponding deliverance and blessings to the Church, and benefits to the whole world, are summed up in immediate connection with the sounding of this trumpet. And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four

that in the most horrible æra of the French revolution, the month of September, 1792, when the victims were chiefly selected from the nobles and the clergy, (Alison, L. 441.) seven thousand were slain. The Editors of the Pictorial History of England observe, "We believe it may safely be assumed, that from four to five thousand victims perished in Paris alone, and that in all France, there fell in the course of this dismal month by murder alone, some seven thousand souls." Vol. III. p. 177.