In respect to the first, it has been a doubt with many deep-judging and good men, whether any person, capable of reflection at the hour of his death, ever went out of this world,without the conviction of conscience, that there is a God, and to whom he is accountable for his conduct in this life. That doubt must be yet stronger, in respect to those who have read the irrefragable proofs of God's existence, in the Old and New Testaments. But this doubt seems now to be removed by recent facts: for have we not seen even those hardened atheists, Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Diderot, the three principal authors of the French Encyclopædia. (that dark abyss of premeditated disbelief), those inveterate enemies of the "two witneses," or Testaments; who had been rendering their souls callous to the truth, by all possible means, nearly half a century; have we not known, I say, these very men "smitten" on their death-beds by all the agonies of torturing guilt, and of that consuming "fire," remorse of conscience*? And after such striking examples, verifying the truth of the text, can any person doubt, but that the principal leaders, and thousands of others, of the atheistical conspiracy, who have perished, have died under an agonizing sense of the supremacy and justice of that God, whose power they had defied and whose very existence they had presumptuously denied?

See l'Abbe Barruel's Memoirs

With regard to the second "plague," famine, have we not seen the city of Paris, the country of Normandy, and other parts of France, in actual insurrection on account of the want of bread; and that too at the very time remarkably pointed out in the text, viz. in the days of the prophesy of the "two witnesses in sackcloth," or just before their destruction in France?

And with regard to the last-mentioned kind of "plagues," by which the "waters are to be turned into blood," it is a remarkable fact, that in proportion as the atheistical enemies to the "two witnesses" busied themselves in carrying into effect their diabolical purpose of destroying all religion, and after the accomplishment of it, until the Act of Toleration, this kind of " plague". was increased and multiplied. Let us call to mind, that upon the destruction of the monarchy of France, all the bands of civil society were broken; and the people, long before poisoned by atheism, were let loose, like hungry beasts from their dens, ready to devour and riot in the blood of one another. The first revolution was planted in the imprisonment of their sovereign, his consort and son; and the destruction of the monarchy. Revolution upon revolution rapidly succeeded, all founded in the blood of the former despots, together with many of their dependants and supporters. Decrees followed one another in the quickest succession, by which millions have been torn from their families, and dragged bandcuffed and chained to the bloody field of battle. Assassinations and massacres have been

every where common, nay legalized; and civil wars, the most bloody ever known, arose in every part of the infatuated and devoted country. Those dreadful engines of death, the guillotine, the national baths so called, the musket and cannon, by which men, women, and children were butchered en masse, and the blood of thousands shed in one day, were in constant exercise. View again the streams of blood, arising from the various and dreadful insurrections in Paris as from their source, and the river Seine polluted with the blood of thousands of human bodies cast into it! See the river Loire groaning under the weight of human carcases, and the streets of the city of Nantz flowing with the blood of its murdered citizens, which, mixing with the waters of that river, literally "turned them into blood," and thereby left them unfit for the use of the miserable remaining inhabitants. Lyons, Cambray, and other capital cities, presented scenes of a similar nature, equally bloody and horrible. In short, it is a striking truth in confirmation of the prophesy, that, during the period in which the two Testaments remained abolished, France was afflicted, and made a great Aceldama, by the "plagues" pointed out in these two verses, and by no other.

Such is the literal meaning of the sentence, "And they have power over waters to turn them "into blood:" but it has also a figurative sense, and which we shall presently find as strictly fulfilled. The word "waters," in many parts of the Scriptures, is made use of to signifiy nations*;

* Psal. xlvi. 3. cxxiy. 4, 5, 6.

and the angel informs us, that "waters" is a figure for "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. We must then in this sense read the text thus: And the two witnesses have power over "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, to turn them " to blood;" that is, to set them at variance and war with one another, in which their blood shall abundantly be shed.

With what wonderful accuracy has the text, in this sense, been likewise fulfilled, not only in France, but elsewhere! Have we not seen the

peoples and multitudes," the inhabitants of Vendee and Toulouse, and others of that devoted country, at variance with the government, and its abettors; and with more than savage rage assassinating, and massacreing one another, giving no quarter, till both land and." waters" have been covered with blood? Yet more, have we not seen the horrid darkness of French anarchy and atheism, overwhelming the different " na tions and tongues" in Europe, uniting and compelling them into rebellions, revolutions, and wars, the most cruel and sanguinary; by which millions have been destroyed, and their countries deluged in blood? But upon what "nations and tongues" have these distressing" plagues" been chiefly inflicted? have they fallen upon those nations, a majority of whose people embraced, at the time, the truths of the two Testaments; or much more generally on those who, in the words

of the prophet," have hurt them," and persecuted them, by murdering not only their adherents, but their doctrine also, by perverting them into a blasphemous idolatry? Have those "plagues" visited Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Prussia, or any other country, in which a majority of the people have not consisted of Papists and Atheists? No. On the contrary, they have been poured down in a very remarkable manner, on the different nations the most bigotted to the church of Rome; and even on Rome itself, that original seat of dark apostacy from the church of Christ; that source of Gentile idolatry, the night of which overspread the western part of Europe. What more could the candid reader, who has seen or heard of the late events, have to convince him that the French nation and its adherents are the people who should thus suffer for opposing and destroying the "two-witnesses?" But I hasten to the subsequent parts of the chapter, where we shall meet with more particular and abundant proof of this truth.

Ver. 7,-" And when they (" the two wit"nesses") shall have nearly finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the "bottomless pit shall make war against them " and shall overcome, and kill them."

By a faithful translation of the metaphorical expressions in this verse into their literal meaning, we shall be able to solve the following im

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