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CHAPTER II.

THE SOUNDING OF THE SEVEN TRUMPETS.REV. SEVENTH, EIGHTH, AND NINTH CHAPTERS.

THE great leading features of Daniel's visions were the four great governments of antiquity, beginning with the Babylonian, and ending with the Roman, in its papal form. Not so, however, with John; he lived when three of those governments had passed away, and the fourth and last was in being, and in the height of its glory, as an universal monarchy. Under that government John was in banishment in the isle of Patmos, "for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ." Accordingly, instead of predicting the rise and triumph of either of those four great governments, it was his part to give the prophetic history of the fall of the last of the four, and give us the various means by which that great persecuting system should come to ruin.

The first decisive step, as has been already remarked, in the downfall of Rome, was the removal of the seat of empire from the west to the east. Until then its unity had been very faithfully preserved. After that, division and subdivision became the order of the day, until the final ruin of the empire.

The sounding of the seven trumpets I understand to shadow forth the instrumentalities by

which the Roman empire was to be overthrown and subverted, and finally ruined.

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The empire, after Constantine, was divided into three parts; and hence the frequent remark, “ third part of men," &c., in allusion to the third part of the empire which was under the scourge. Under the first four trumpets the two western divisions fell, and under the fifth and sixth the eastern empire was crushed; but under the seventh trumpet great Babylon entire will sink to rise no more at all. Then the church of the First-born will return from her captivity, to the land of promise and everlasting life; and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.

In giving an outline of this subject, I shall, for the most part, follow Keith, in his "Signs of the Times," on the first four trumpets. I should be glad to give his remarks and historical quotations entire, would my limits, which are prescribed for this work, admit of it.

The subject properly begins with the second verse of the eighth chapter; and the first verse should have been annexed to the seventh chapter, it being the conclusion of the opening of the seals. From the 2d to the 5th verse of chapter viii., we have the prefatory remarks, preparatory to the sounding of the trumpets. Then follows the

sounding of the first angel.

THE FIRST TRUMPET.

Verses 6, 7: "And the seven angels, which had the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to The first angel sounded, and there fol

sound.

lowed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up."

Mr. Keith has very justly remarked, on the subject of this prophecy," None could elucidate the texts more clearly, or expound them more fully, than the task has been performed by Gibbon. The chapters of the skeptical philosopher, that treat directly of the matter, need but a text to be prefixed, and a few unholy words to be blotted out, to form a series of expository lectures on the eighth and ninth chapters of Revelation." "Little or nothing is left for the professed interpreter to do but to point to the pages of Gibbon."

The first sore and heavy judgment which fell on western Rome in its downward course, was the war with the Goths under Alaric, styled by himself" the scourge of God." After the death of Theodosius, the Roman emperor, in January, 395, before the end of the winter, the Goths, under Alaric, were in arms against the empire.

"Hail and fire mingled with blood, cast upon the earth." The terrible effects of this Gothic invasion, are thus described by Gibbon, vol. V., p. 176:

"The barbarian auxiliaries erected their independent standard; and boldly avowed hostile designs, which they had long cherished in their ferocious minds. Their countrymen, who had been condemned, by the conditions of the last treaty, to a life of tranquillity and labor, deserted their farms at the first sound of the trumpet, and eagerly assumed the weapons which they had reluctantly laid down. The barriers of the Dan

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ube were thrown open; the savage warriofs of Scythia issued from their forest; and the uncommon severity of the winter allowed the poet to remark, that they rolled their ponderous wagons over the broad and icy back of the indignant river.' The unhappy nations of the provinces to the south of the Danube, submitted to the calamities, which, in the course of twenty years, were almost grown familiar to their imagination; and the various troops of barbarians, who gloried in the Gothic name, were irregularly spread from the woody shores of Dalmatia, to the walls of Constantinople. The Goths were directed by the bold and artful genius of Alaric. In the midst of a divided court, and a discontented people, the emperor, Arcadius, was terrified by the aspect of the Gothic arms. Alaric disdained to trample any longer on the prostrate and ruined countries of Thrace and Dacia, and he resolved to seek a plentiful harvest of fame and riches in a province which had hitherto escaped the ravages of war.

"Alaric traversed, without resistance, the plains of Macedonia and Thessaly. The troops which had been posted to defend the straits of Thermopylæ, retired, as they were directed, without attempting to disturb the secure and rapid passage of Alaric; and the fertile fields of Phocis and Boeotia were instantly covered with a deluge of barbarians, who massacred the males of an age to bear arms, and drove away the beautiful females, with the spoil and cattle of the flaming villages. The travellers who visited Greece several years afterwards could easily discover the deep and bloody traces of the march of the Goths. The whole territory of Attica was blasted by his bane

ful presence; and if we may use the comparison of a contemporary philosopher, Athens itself resembled the bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the Goths: and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death, from beholding the slavery of their families, and the conflagration of their cities."

It was thus that "hail," from the fact of the northern origin of the invaders; "fire," from the destruction by flame of both city and country; blood," from the terrible slaughter of the citizens of the empire by the bold and intrepid warriors, "were cast upon the earth." This vivid description will be still more forcibly illustrated by Gibbon's account of the invasion of the western empire by the Goths:

"The birth of Alaric, the glory of his past exploits, and the confidence in his future designs, insensibly united the body of the nation under his victorious standard ;-and, with the unanimous consent of the barbarian chieftains, the mastergeneral of Illyricum was elevated, according to ancient custom, on a shield, and solemnly proclaimed king of the Visgoths. Armed with this double power, seated on the verge of the two empires, he alternately sold his deceitful promises to the courts of Arcadius and Honorius, (of Constantinople and Rome,) till he declared and executed his resolution of invading the dominions of the west (of Rome.) The provinces of Europe which belonged to the eastern emperor were already exhausted; those of Asia were inaccessible; and the strength of Constantinople had resisted his attack. But he was tempted by the fame, the