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be evil angels, because it can hardly be supposed that good angels should have been bound; and hence many commentators have concluded that the army to whose motions their liberation gives birth, shall be, like the locusts, an army of evil spirits; sent forth with still more formidable powers than their predecessors, and permitted, not to torment only, but to kill the third part of men.'

"It seems clear, however, that the loosing of the four angels will in some way be the cause of the invasion by this fearful army; for the slaying of the third part of men, which in one place is spoken of as occasioned by the fire, and smoke, and brimstone, which proceeded out of the mouths of the horses, is in another place attributed to the angels themselves. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to infer that they will be in some eminent degree the leaders or directors of the army of horsemen.

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Again, it must be observed, that the four angels are said to have been bound at or in the river Euphrates; and we are therefore probably to look to that region as the scene of this great judgment; inasmuch as the prophecy seems distinctly to assert, that from thence shall issue the great multitude of horsemen who are to be the instruments of the predicted massacre, wherein the third part of men' shall be slain.

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"This conclusion is in exact conformity with the inference, to which, in a former course of Lectures, we were led from a consideration of the prophecies of Daniel; namely that the countries in the region of the Euphrates, once the seat of such mighty empires, are destined, at some future period, to recover their political power, and to become the scene of the last great struggle between the prince of this world, and the people of God."-(pp. 149-152.)

3. Of the measuring of the temple:

"We cannot, therefore, doubt that the literal sense of the prophecy before us speaks of Jerusalem as the scene of the events foretold. The measuring of the temple denotes, as we have seen, its restoration; after which the holy city shall be encompassed with armies, and trodden under foot of the Gentiles forty and two months."-(p. 171.)

4. Of the Two Witnesses :

"All that can be with certainty affirmed from the prophecy is, that two prophets will be raised up within the Jewish branch of the Church, after the apostacy and rejection of the Gentiles, who will continue to prophesy, clothed in sackcloth, during the entire period of twelve hundred and sixty days, the period of Antichrist's dominion: that the last act of his tyranny will be to make war with these witnesses, and to kill them: that their dead bodies will lie unburied in the streets, amidst the rejoicings of the world, 'because these two witnesses tormented them that dwelt on the earth;' that the witnesses, after three days and a half, will stand upon their feet, and will ascend into heaven, causing great fear to fall upon all who see them. Then shall follow, in the very same hour,' a great earthquake, in which a tenth part of the city shall be destroyed, and seven thousand men shall perish: and the remnant shall be affrighted, and shall give glory to the God of heaven."(pp. 212, 213.)

5. Of the Woman who fled into the wilderness :

"I would observe that the woman, seen by the apostle in the vision, must denote, not the Christian Church, for the reasons already suggested, but the Jewish nation.

"This interpretation is in strict accordance with the language of the Old Testament, in which Israel is frequently spoken of under the emblem of a woman; and it is also remarkable, as tending to explain the symbols em

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ployed in the prophecy, that the dispersed and rejected state of the Jewish nation is represented by the prophets under the emblem of a barren woman. The prophet Isaiah, for example, thus predicts the restoration of Israel from her dispersion. Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.' And again, For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord, thy Redeemer.'

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"These passages are sufficient to show that the emblem of a woman, as a figure of the Jewish people, was already familiar to all who were acquainted with the ancient prophecies. And if by the barren and deserted state of a forsaken wife, were pourtrayed the rejection of Israel, and the wrath which caused the Lord to hide his face from her, we may perhaps fairly infer, that the sign of the woman, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered,' would denote the removal of that wrath, and the reception of Israel once more, into the favour and covenanted love of God."-(pp. 239–241.)

6. Of the first and second Beasts :

"On the whole, then, we see from this prophecy, if the view I have taken of it be correct, that in the latter days, when the Gentiles shall have fallen away into the great apostacy, and the candlestick of the Christian Church shall be removed from amongst them, the Jewish nation, after their restoration to the promised land, shall again be subjected to fearful persecutions, and the great body of them forced to abandon Judea, and to take refuge in a place prepared for them of God,' where they shall be preserved until the indignation be overpast; that a formidable power shall then arise, headed by two remarkable leaders, who shall fix their seat and establish their authority among the apostate Gentiles, setting up a gross and blasphemous system of idolatry, persecuting the saints, the holy people, and putting all to death, whether Jew or Gentile, small or great, who shall refuse to conform to the idolatrous worship that shall be then the established religion of the world; that one at least of these blasphemous potentates shall have power to work miracles, whereby he shall deceive them that dwell on the earth; and that the kingdom which shall thus be set up on the ruins of the Gentile Church, and in open defiance of every thing divine and sacred, shall be destroyed only by the immediate presence and sudden appearing of Him, out of whose mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; who shall rule them with a rod of iron; and who treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.'"'-(pp. 260, 261.)

It will be apparent, from these passages, that Mr. Todd does so effectually, by his interpretation, make the Book of Revelation Literal and Future,-as to remove it, for all practical ends, “far away out of our sight." Yet he himself strives to represent the matter very differently in a passage towards the close of his LecHe says:

tures.

"It follows, therefore, that the question of the right interpretation of the

Apocalypse, which I have endeavoured to bring before you, is not a mere question of idle speculation, but of deep and practical importance. If this book be a moral myth or allegory, as some have thought; if its predictions have been all long ago fulfilled in the Jewish wars and the destruction of Jerusalem, as others tell us; if the apostacy be already come, the witnesses slain, the beast and the prophet long ago revealed in the medieval corruptions of Christianity, or the ambitious usurpations of the Court of Rome; then it must be admitted that the prophecy does less intimately concern us than it would do if we should adopt the explanation of it for which I have been contending. Not that, under any circumstances, we should be justified in treating this sacred book with the practical neglect which is so commonly shown for it; for, whatever be its interpretation, and particularly if we regard it as predicting the existence of religious corruptions which are still in the midst of us, the Apocalypse must ever be read as a sacred mine of spiritual instruction and holy warning."-(p. 261.)

Now nothing can be more untrue, than that, on the Protestant interpretation," the prophecy less intimately concerns us" than it does if viewed on Dr. Todd's scheme.

Interpreted as it is, for instance, by Mr. Elliott, or, as it had been long ago, by Mede and Newton, Cuninghame and others, the book lays before us an inspired history of the Church, from the Apostles' days down to the moment of Christ's coming. We follow, in its pages, the decay of Paganism and establishment of the early Christian Church;-its corruption;-the rise of Mahomedism; the Reformation ;-and the war which Popery has waged against the saints. And we find ourselves placed towards the close of this wonderful history, and watching for the occurrence of some of its greatest events. What can more intimately concern us," than to know that we are living in that critical period of the Church's history, when the Euphrates is drying up,-when the "three spirits like frogs" are going abroad, and when the sudden appearance of our Lord himself, evidently draweth nigh?

But where does Dr. Todd place us? True, he may say, that he makes the history commence with the Second Advent of Christ; and this greatest of all events,-he may add,—may occur no one knows how quickly.

But this will be a deception. The effect of the adoption of his system on the mind of any of his readers will be of a totally different kind. It is not the single event of Christ's second coming, which he holds out; for, of this he might justly say, that "the day or the hour knoweth no man." But he accompanies and surrounds this one event, by all the circumstances predicted in the Apocalypse, the whole of which, he tells us, will occur " in a short space." But, even supposing their acting out to occupy only "a short space"-it is quite clear that their approach must necessarily imply a considerable preparation. As, for instance, when he tells us that the eleventh chapter signifies, that Jerusalem shall be

repossessed by the Jews, and inhabited by faithful believers in Christ; that the temple shall be rebuilt; and the city" inhabited as towns without walls, for "the multitude of men and cattle therein "—and all this, before the Two Witnesses shall arise, or be slain ;-does he not clearly postpone, in every one's view, the accomplishment of these prophecies, or even the commencement of that accomplishment, for many years, perhaps centuries. Every one knows, that Jerusalem is not now occupied by faithful worshippers of Christ,-that the Temple is not rebuilt;-and that there is not even the slightest symptom of the approach of these events. Hence on Dr. Todd's view, we postpone all idea of the Two Witnesses, of their prophesying, death, and resurrection, until the coming in of a state of things for which there is not at present even the least apparent preparation!

So again, when Dr. Todd insists upon making the Second Woe literal and future, and tells us to expect an actual army of two hundred millions of horsemen, (there being, probably, at this moment, not six millions of horses on the face of the whole earth ;) and when he adds, that in the fulfilment of this Woe, "the countries in the region of the Euphrates are destined to become the scene of the last great struggle between the prince of this world, and the people of God,"-is it not clear, that he thus removes the whole prophecy, practically, to a prodigious distance,—to a distance, in short, which takes away all personal interest? We may admit, without difficulty, that the Second coming of Christ may occur at any time; but we cannot expect a great conflict near the Euphrates," when no combatants are yet prepared; nor can we look to see the Gentiles surrounding the delivered Jerusalem with armies, when Jerusalem, as yet, is not delivered, and when no movements for her deliverance are even thought of.

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Dr. Todd's scheme, therefore, is, in reality, a scheme for getting rid of the Apocalypse ;-that is, a scheme for representing it as a book in which our great grand-children may, by possibility, have some concern; but which, to us, speaks only of events which are at a prodigious distance. But how does Dr. Todd reconcile this with the plain declarations of the Book itself?

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A very singular discrepancy, we might almost say, contrast,is apparent, between Dr. Todd's preliminary Lecture, and those which contain his interpretation. In his opening view of the subject, his object is, to show, that "the Apocalypse is not inexplicable," and that "it was given for the present use of the Church." Hence he commences by reminding us that "the express words of "the book itself tell us that the revelation of futurity which it con"tains was given to the Church for this especial purpose, "to show

"unto God's servants the things which must shortly come to pass." (p. 8.) And he combats the supposition that the book is a myth, or an allegory, by asking, "How then are we to explain "those passages in which St. John describes himself as commanded "to write those things which must be hereafter?-in which he speaks of the time of the fulfilment as approaching ?—in which "he proclaims himself a prophet?" (p. 22.)

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Thus far, then, in opposing the idea that the study of the book is useless, Dr. Todd is sound and orthodox, because he rests on the plain and clear meaning of God's word. But the moment he begins to interpret, then the erroneous system which he has adopted, compels him to evade the force of the very words which he has above quoted; and to do the greatest violence to the plainest language of the prophecy, even while he professes to adhere to its literal meaning.

His interpretation, as we have seen, is this:

1. The first seal,-the very first action of the prophecy,―he makes to prefigure our Lord's second advent. But this, the commencement, being still future,-it follows that the whole is still future, and that nothing has yet come to pass, of all that the apostle predicts.

2. But he also tells us, that the meaning of the second woetrumpet is, that "the countries in the region of the Euphrates, once the seat of such mighty empires, are destined, at some "future period, to recover their political power, and to become the "scene scene of the last great struggle." (p. 152.) And from these countries, now almost uninhabited, he expects the army of two hundred millions of horsemen to issue forth.

3. And the prophecy of the Two Witnesses, he interprets to mean, "that two prophets will be raised up within the Jewish "branch of the earth, after the apostacy and rejection of the "Gentiles, who will continue to prophesy, clothed in sackcloth,

during the entire period of 1260 days, the period of Antichrist's "dominion,”-previous to which time, he had already told us, Jerusalem will be inhabited again, and the temple rebuilt;the 144,000" sealed ones" being literally Jews, dwelling at Jerusalem.

Thus, adopting Mr. Todd's view, we should look, indeed, for a literal fulfilment of the prophecy, but only after great and mighty changes, among nations and kingdoms; the commencement, or even approach of which, is not yet visible. So that, in fact, the first seal is to be opened, and the first rider to go forth, some hundreds of years hence!

Clearly, then, while Dr. Todd does, at the beginning, insist upon

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