SECTION IX THE FRENCH REVOLUTION STAGE

SUDDENLY the storm burst on France, and on the world. The elements of destruction had long been gathering. The skies were already dark. There was a restless heaving of the nations. The throes of a terrible convulsion were felt to be at hand. It came like the bursting of a volcano. Thrones and temples went down in the wreck. France was covered with carnage; Europe thrown into war; the world revolutionized.

Never was there anything more terribly majestic in human history—never will there be—till the last judgment day.

Viewed in relation to the past and to the future, to all that it destroyed, to all that it inaugurated, the French Revolution stands alone, without a parallel.

Viewed in itself as an explosion of infidelity, immorality, massacre and war, there is nothing; in the range of the world’s history to compare with it.

Before the tremendous forces which it unchained, thrones, temples and institutions which had stood for ages were overturned as trees by a tempest, and swept away as straws by a whirlwind.

“Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty,
Give unto the Lord glory and strength:
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters,
The God of glory thundereth;
The Lord is upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful,
The voice of the Lord is full of majesty;
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars;
Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
The Lord sitteth upon the flood;
Yea, the Lord sitteth King forever.”

The history of the French Revolution is the history of Europe for more than a century; the history of the modern world.

Alison, who entitled his voluminous history of the French Revolution, “The history of Europe’ since the accession of Louis XVI,”begins by declaring that “There is no period in the history of the world which can be compared with it, in point of interest and importance,”and that “in no former age were events of such magnitude crowded together, or interests so momentous at issue between contending nations. From the flame which was kindled in Europe the whole world has been involved in conflagration, and a new era has dawned upon both hemispheres from the effects of its extension.”

On the 10th of May, 1774, the corrupt and profligate Louis XV died. On the same day Louis XVI came to the throne of France; the Louis, who nineteen years later was executed on the scaffold.

At this point—the accession of Louis XVI in 1774— Carlyle, like Alison, begins his history of the French Revolution, written as with a pen of fire. 1

In France at this time, France of the many massacres of the Huguenots, “Faith had gone out, scepticism had come in.”

“In such a France,”says Carlyle, “as in a powder-tower, where fire unquenched and now unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all around, has Louis XV lain down to die; “a “portentous hour.”His reign had been, to use the words of Alison,, “the most deplorable of French history. The whole frame of society seemed to be decomposed … all that we read in ancient historians, veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language, of the orgies of ancient Babylon, was equalled, if not exceeded, by the nocturnal revels of the Regent Orleans, the Cardinal Dubois, and his other licentious associates nor were manners improved on the accession of Louis XV, who fell under the government of successive mistresses each more dissolute and degraded than her predecessor, until at length decorum was so openly violated at court that even the corrupted circles of Versailles were scandalized by the undisguised profligacy which was exhibited.”

On the doings of Madame Pompadour, Madame Du Barry, and the Pare aux Cerfs we drop the veil.

Embarrassment in the national finances, involving an annual deficit of seven and a half millions of money was a further feature of the period. The Church was “richer than Golconda,”while the poor of the land groaned like wild animals under the load of oppression, and the lash of cruelty. The process of “stripping barer,” which men “called governing,” was coming to a crisis. The despised masses in their “clay houses, and garrets, and hutches,”consisted as Carlyle reminds us, of “units,”every one of which had “his own heart and sorrows “; a “miraculous man with a spark of the Divinity, what thou callest an immortal soul, in him.””Untaught, uncomforted, unfed, they pine stagnantly in thick obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction,—the lot of millions.”Some rioted and were hanged the following days. “O ye poor naked wretches,”says Carlyle, “and this, this is your inarticulate cry to heaven, as of a dumb tortured animal, crying from uttermost depths of pain and abasement. Do these azure skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo of it on you? Respond to it only by hanging on the following days?—Not so: not forever. Ye are heard in heaven. And the answer too will come,— in a horror of great darkness, and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall drink.”

Here then, was a kingdom full of oppressions, superstitions, immorality, and infidelity. The salt of the land had been cast out. The Huguenots had been expelled; the Jansenists crushed. The Huguenots had striven to produce a Reformation outside the Romish Church ; the Jansenists a Reformation within it. Both had been defeated and suppressed with the utmost tyranny and cruelty. What histories theirs! Let the great library of Huguenot works in Paris, and the Jansenist works collected in New York 1 bear witness.

France had got rid of Huguenots and Jansenists; only the crimson blood stains of the tragedy remained. Pope and king had it all their own way. Side by side they stood, with their feet planted on the necks of a prostrate people, whose bodies and souls they had enslaved. But that people could still see, and feel, and think. They were millions in number, and began at last to turn under the heel of tyranny. Why should they be forever trodden on, they asked; by what right, human or divine were they, the people, sacrificed to crowned and mitred dignities? Had not the individual man his rights? The tyranny which trampled on them was consecrated by religion. What then was the religion worth? It claimed to be the only authorized, the only divine religion in the world, but it was an imposition. Let its mask be torn away. Thus did superstition make men infidels; while tyranny made them rebels. Infidel revolutionists know no restraint. As a force they can only destroy. 2

First then, in the list of the destructive agencies which produced the French Revolution, should be placed infidelity. A revolution in the inner realm of mind preceded the revolution in the outer social realm.

Marvellous in their adaptation to its accomplishment were the instruments of this work. Of these Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau were among the chief. Montesquieu was born on the i8th of January, 1689, the year of the completion of the English Revolution; Voltaire on the 2Oth of February, 1694; Rousseau on the 28th of June, 1712.

In the profound quiet of his retreat Montesquieu, who was a philosopher, compared the leading governments of the world, and analyzed their abstract rights, in works which have become famous, and produced an immense and lasting influence on public opinion in France. His greatest work, “L’Esprit des Lois”undermined the existing government without directly attacking it. It destroyed its foundations in the minds of men. Rousseau’s numerous and eloquent works, especially his “L’inegalit’e parm’i les hommes”and “Contrat social”poured light on the injustice of the existing order of things; while Voltaire’s satires held up all that had been reverenced to contempt and mockery. For the better part of a century he wrote, and wrote; sending forth a stream of essays, tragedies, comedies, fictions, histories, and poems in Seventy Volumes, which from first to last were “one continued sneer at all that men do hold, and all they ought to hold sacred.”Didero and D’Alembert in their infidel Encyclopedic, attacked both faith and superstition in the name of science. A host of writers of similar principles sprang up, and through the popular press poured forth a flood of infidelity. Under its influence the old bonds were loosened; the old landmarks swept away.

Writing from Paris, December 25, 1753, Lord Chesterfield said, “All the symptoms I have ever met with in history, previous to great changes and revolutions in government, now exist, and daily increase in France.”There was “a monarchy all but absolute, a feudal nobility with oppressive powers, and invidious privileges; a burdensome official aristocracy, with its own privileges and exemptions; an exacting royal administration; injurious monopolies; and an oppressed and suffering people without political rights.”

There was a Church which had crushed the Huguenots and Jansenists; a society utterly corrupt in morals, and literature propagating infidelity, and sowing the seeds of revolution.

Now was seen the marvellous spectacle of a nation which had silenced her noble Protestant teachers, had cast out the salt which might have preserved her from corruption; a Church which had triumphed over truth, and trampled religion beneath her feet; and a monarchy which denied rights and liberty to its subjects, “confronted by a new class of thinkers”; hostile alike to state and religion; men who were the direct product of the system they opposed; clever, satirical, resolute, unsparing, bold in their assaults; followed, flattered, worshipped by the multitude; idolized even by those whom they had taught to dethrone the vain idols their fathers had adored.

Following the change of public thought, came a change of action. With the pressure of financial distress the Parliament of Paris demanded “that the states-general should be assembled to devise means for the relief of the country.”Nearly two hundred years had elapsed since this “disused and almost forgotten body “had been called into existence. The king, “distracted by divided counsels, but leaning to a liberal policy”consented to “this hazardous venture, and convoked the states-general.”The tiers-etat were to be double the number of the other orders; by this arrangement power was at once transferred to the lower classes, which up to that time, had been without political influence.

The famous Mirabeau cast in his lot with the commons; a “body intent upon reforms, and a steady foe to privileges. Its mission was to satisfy the complaints of the people; and it was burning to resist the pretensions of the nobles and the Church.””The two higher orders sat apart in their respective churches, leaving the Commons as the largest body in possession of the great hall “the Commons insisted that the verification of the powers of the three estates should be conducted by the entire body, and awaited the coming of the two other orders . . . after five weeks of fruitless negotiations the Commons took a bolder step and declared themselves the National Assembly. It was an act of usurpation which marked the commencement of the Revolution.”

They followed up the act by “decrees designed to secure their own authority. The king, influenced by the cotirt, closed the doors of the hall against the assembly.””The Commons at once adjourned to the racket court -where they swore not to separate until they had given a constitution to France.”On the racket court being closed against them, they adjourned to the Church of St. Louis. Threatened and commanded to separate they refused to move.

“This defiance of the king’s authority was submitted to by the court, and from that day power passed into the hands of the Assembly.”1 In the struggle which followed, two popular parties strove for the ascendancy, the Girondists and the Jacobins. The former, the representatives of the people in the Gironde, near Bordeaux, endeavoured to obtain “the sovereignty of right over force; of intelligence over prejudices; of people over governments; they sought equality; the substitution of reason for authority; the reign of the people; they called the principles they proclaimed “a gospel of social rights, a charter of humanity.”Lamartine has written their history in three eloquent volumes. The Jacobins, so called from the convent of Jacobins in which the deputies from Brittany first met, under the name of the “Club Breton,”were of a different character. Distinguished by the violence of their proceedings, prepared for the commission of every crime, they attracted “the most audacious and able of the democratic party.”

“Fifteen hundred members usually attended their meetings; a few lamps only lighted the vast extent of the room; the members appeared for the most part in shabby attire, and the galleries were filled with the lowest of the populace. In this den of darkness were prepared the bloody lists of proscription and massacre; the meetings were opened with revolutionary songs, and shouts of applause followed each addition to the list of murder, each account of its perpetration by the affiliated societies. Never was a man of honour— seldom a man of virtue—admitted within this society; it had an innate horror of every one who was not attached to its fortunes by the hellish bond of committed wickedness. A robber, an assassin, was certain of admission—as certain as the victim of their violence was of rejection. The well-known question put to the entrant: —”What have you done to be hanged if the ancient regime is restored? “exemplifies at once the tie which held together its members. The secret sense of deserved punishment constituted the bond of their unholy alliance. Their place of meeting was adorned with anarchical symbols, tricolour flags, and busts of the leading revolutionists of former times. Long before the death of Louis XVI, two portraits, adorned with garlands, of Jacques Clement and Ravaillac, were hung on the walls: immediately below was the date of the murder which each had committed, with the words, “He was fortunate, he killed a king.”

The leaders of this party were Danton, Marat, Robespierre, Billaud Varennes, St. Just, and Collot d’Herbois— names destined to acquire an execrable celebrity in French annals, whose deeds will never be forgotten so long as the voice of conscience is heard in the human heart. Into the hands of these wretches came the government of France.

Among them, Danton gained the ascendancy. “Nature seemed to have expressly created him for the terrible part which he played in the Revolution . . . His figure was colossal, his health unbroken, his strength extraordinary; a countenance ravaged by the smallpox, with small eyes, thick lips, and a libertine look, but a lofty commanding forehead at once fascinated and terrified the beholder. A commanding air, dauntless intrepidity, and a voice of thunder fitted him to be what Mirabeau described as “a huge blast bellows to inflame the popular passions.”1

“Marat was the worst of this band. Nature had impressed the atrocity of his character on his countenance, hideous features, the expression of a demon, revolted all who approached him . . for more than three years his writings incessantly stimulated the people to cruelty . . so complete a fanatic had he become in this respect that he scrupled not to recommend torture to the captives, burning at the stake, and branding with red-hot iron, as a suitable means of satisfying the public indignation . . . But all the leaders of the Jacobins sink into insignificance before their ruler and despot, Robespierre … a sanguinary bigot, a merciless fanatic, with talents of the highest order, his reasoning powerful, his intellect cool, his sagacity great, his perseverance unconquerable. He adhered steadily to principle. He maintained that the multitude can do no wrong.””He strove to destroy all the higher classes of society,”and “well-nigh annihilated the whole intellect and virtue of France . . . Napoleon did not prosecute savage warfare for the external glory of the republic with more vigour and perseverance than Robespierre did internal massacre to exterminate its domestic enemies, and the extraordinary success and long-continued power of both proved that each had rightly judged the popular mind in his own day—that they both marched, as Napoleon said, “with the opinion of five millions of men.”1 He had great designs in view in the reconstruction of the social edifice after three hundred thousand heads had fallen. His visions were of an innocent republic, with equal fortunes, arising out of the sea of blood. He never abandoned a principle, but he never saved a friend. It was hard to say whether his supporters or his enemies fell fastest beneath the scythe of his ambition.

Our limits forbid us to give any full account of the tragic events of the Revolution, which beginning with the convocation of the states- general in 1789, and the establishment of a Republic in 1793, advanced to the strife between the Girondists and Jacobins, and after the fall of the former, entered on the era of the Reign of Terror, the period of general massacre; and culminated in the rise of military despotism, and all the terrible wars of Napoleon. History tells us “how the infidel democracy suddenly up rose in its might, destroyed the Bastile, issued its declaration of the rights of man; assaulted the king and queen by night, at Versailles, and murdering some of their body- guard, forced them to proceed as prisoners to Paris, the bloody heads carried on pikes before the royal carriage. How the people confiscated all the vast revenues of the Church, all the domains of the crown, and all the estates of refugee nobles, for the use of the State; subjected to themselves all ecclesiastical, civil, and judicial power throughout the country; murdered the royal guard, and some five thousand leading royalists; dethroned, imprisoned, tried, condemned, and murdered the king, and then the queen; declared war against all kings, -and sympathy with all Revolutionists everywhere; how the “reign of terror”witnessed the slaughter of one million and twenty-two thousand persons, -of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes, till the streets of Paris ran with blood, and the guillotines could not overtake their work. How thousands were mowed down by grape-shot fusillades; drowned in “noyades,”where in loaded vessels, hundreds of victims were purposely sunk in the rivers; roasted alive in heated ovens, or tortured to death by other infernal cruelties. How Christianity was publicly renounced, and a prostitute enthroned as “goddess of reason”at Notre Dame, and worshipped by the National Convention, and by the mob of Paris, with the wildest orgies of licentiousness (morality as well as mercy having perished with religion); how the most horrid mockery of the solemn rites of Christianity was publicly enacted, an ass being made to drink the sacramental wine; how the Sabbath itself was abolished, and the decade substituted for the week; and how hundreds and thousands of priests were massacred or driven into exile, and the churches and cathedrals turned into stables and barracks. Taken as a whole, the French Revolution was a convulsion, in which the angry passions of men, set free from all restraint, manifested themselves with a force and fury unprecedented in the history of the world, against monarchical, aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and religious institutions.”

Five features in this marvellous course of events demand recognition.

1. The complete overthrow of the corrupt and tyrannical government of France.—On the 2ist of January, 1793, between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysees, surrounded by an innumerable multitude as far as the eye could reach, standing on the scaffold, his hands bound, his words lost in the roar of the drums being beaten, Louis XVI, King of France, laid his head upon the block, and the descending axe terminated his existence. With the execution of the king, and the murder of the queen, fell the government of France, laden with the crimes of centuries of oppression, -corruption, and cruelty.

2. The complete overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church in France.-—On the 23d of November, 1793, “atheism in France reached its extreme point, by a decree of the municipality ordering the immediate closing of all the churches, and placing the whole priests under surveillance.”The services of religion were now universally abandoned. The pulpits were deserted throughout all the revolutionized districts; baptism ceased; the burial service was no longer heard; the sick received no communion; the dying no consolation. A heavier anathema than that of papal power pressed upon the peopled realm of France—the anathema of heaven, inflicted by the madness of her own inhabitants. The village bells were silent; Sunday was obliterated. Infancy entered the world without a blessing; age left it without a hope. In lieu of the services of the Church, the licentious fetes of the new system were performed by the most abandoned females; it appeared as if the Christian worship had been succeeded by the orgies of the Babylonian priest, or the grossness of the Hindoo theocracy. On every tenth day a revolutionary leader ascended the pulpit, and preached atheism to the bewildered audience; Marat was universally deified; and even the instruments of death were sanctified by the name of the “Holy Guillotine.” Throughout the whole of France the Roman Catholic Churches were desecrated; Notre Dame in Paris was converted into the “Temple of Reason”: 24,000 priests were massacred, and 40,000 Churches ” turned into stables.”

3. The complete overthrow of the Papacy in Italy.—On the invasion of Italy by the French Revolutionists, the government of the Pope was overthrown. Berthier “marched upon Rome, set up a Roman republic, and laid hands upon the Pope. The sovereign pontiff was borne away to the camp of the infidels . . . from prison to prison, and finally, carried captive into France. Here he breathed his last at Valence, in the land where his priests had been slain, where his power was broken, and his name and office were a mockery and by- word, and in the keeping of the rude soldiers of the unbelieving commonwealth, which had for ten years held to his lips a cup of such manifold and exceeding bitterness.”

The spoliation of Rome accompanied the overthrow of the Papacy. “Long before the Pope had sunk under the persecution of his oppressors, Rome had experienced the bitter fruits of republican fraternization. Immediately after the entry of the French troops, commenced the regular and systematic pillage of the city. Not only the churches and the convents, but the palaces of the cardinals and of the nobility, were laid waste. The agents of the Directory, insatiable in the pursuit of plunder, and merciless in the means of exacting it, ransacked every quarter within its walls, seized the most valuable works of art, and stripped the Eternal City of those treasures which had survived the Gothic fire, and escaped the rapacious hands of the Spanish soldiers in the reign of Charles V. The bloodshed was much less, but the spoil collected incomparably greater, than at the disastrous sack which followed the storm of the city, and death of the Constable Bourbon. Almost all the great works of art which have since that time been collected throughout Europe, were then scattered abroad. The spoliation exceeded all that the Goths or Vandals had effected. Not only the palaces of the Vatican and the Monte Cavallo, and the chief nobility of Rome, but those of Castel Gandolfo, on the margin of the Alban Lake, of Terracina, the Villa Albani, and others in the environs of Rome, were plundered of every article of value which they possessed. The whole sacerdotal habits of the Pope and cardinals were burned, in order to collect from the flames the gold with which they were adorned. The Vatican was stripped to its naked walls; the immortal frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo, which could not be removed, alone remaining in solitary beauty amidst the general desolation. A contribution of four millions of francs in money, two millions in provisions, and three thousand horses, was imposed upon a city already exhausted by the enormous exactions it had previously undergone. Under the directions of the infamous commissionary Haller, the domestic library, museum, furniture, jewels, and even the private clothes of the Pope were sold. Nor did the palaces of the Roman nobility escape devastation. The noble galleries of the Cardinal Braschi, and the Cardinal York, the last relic of the Stuart Line, underwent the same fate. Others, as those of the Chigi, Borghese, and Doria palaces, were rescued from destruction only by enormous ransoms. Everything of value that the treaty of Tolentine had left in Rome be- came the prey of republican cupidity; and the very name of freedom soon became odious from the sordid and infamous crimes which were committed under its shelter.

“Nor was the oppression of the French confined to the plunder of palaces and churches. Eight cardinals were arrested, and sent to Civita Castellana; while enormous contributions were levied on the Papal territory, and brought home the bitterness of conquest to every poor man’s door. At the same time, the ample territorial possessions of the Church and the monasteries were confiscated, and declared national property; a measure which, by drying up at once the whole resources of the affluent classes, precipitated into the extreme of misery the numerous poor, who were maintained by their expenditure, or fed by their boulity. All the respectable citizens and clergy were in fetters; and a base and despicable faction alone, among whom, to their disgrace be it told, were found fourteen cardinals, followed in the train of their oppressors; and at a public festival, returned thanks to God for the miseries they had brought upon their country.”

4. The Wholesale Revolutionary Massacres in Paris, and throughout France.—The great massacre of St. Bartholomew was. cast into the shade by “the St. Bartholomew of five years,”as the massacre of the Revolution has been called. More than 30,000 were massacred in the city of Lyons; at Nantes, 27,000; in Paris, 150,000; in La Vendee, 300,000. In all France about two millions of persons were massacred, of whom 250,000 were women; 230,000 children; and 24,000 priests. The massacre of the priests “was but the prelude to a general massacre in the Abbaye, the horrors of which exceeded anything hitherto witnessed in the Revolution. Wearied at length with the labour of hewing down so many victims, they fell upon the plan of instituting a mock tribunal, with the murderer Maillard for its president, in which, after going through the form of a trial, they turned them out to be massacred by the people who thronged the prison doors, loudly clamouring for their share in the work of extermination. The cries of these victims, who were led out to be hewn to pieces by the multitude, first drew the attention of the prisoners in the cells to the fate which awaited themselves; seized separately and dragged before an inexorable tribunal, they were speedily, given over to the vengeance of the populace. Reding was one of the first to be selected- The pain of his broken limbs extorted cries even from that intrepid Swiss soldier, as he was dragged along from his cell to the hall of trial; and one of the assassins, more merciful than the rest, drew his sword across his throat, so that he perished before reaching the judges. His dead body was thrown out to the assassins. The forms of justice were prostituted to the most inhuman massacre. Torn from their dungeons, the prisoners were hurried before a tribunal, where the president Maillard sat by torchlight with a drawn sabre before him, and his robes drenched with blood; officials with drawn swords, and shirts stained with gore, surrounded the chair. A few minutes, often a few seconds, disposed of the fate of each individual. Dragged from the pretended judgment- hall, they were turned out to the populace, who thronged round the doors armed with sabres, panting for slaughter, and with loud cries, demanding a quicker supply of victims. No executioners were required; the people despatched the condemned with their own hands, and sometimes enjoyed the savage pleasure of beholding them run a considerable distance before they expired. Immured in the upper chambers of the building, the other prisoners endured the agony of witnessing the prolonged sufferings of their comrades; a dreadful thirst added to their tortures, and the inhuman jailers refused even a draught of water to their earnest entreaties. Some had the presence of mind to observe in what attitude death soonest relieved the victims, and resolved when their hour arrived, to keep their hands down, lest, by warding off the strokes, they should prolong their agonies.”

“Similar tragedies took place at the same time in all the other jails of Paris, and in the religious houses, which were filled with victims.”

This was the era of the guillotine. Fixed first on the Place St. Antoine, and soon after at the Barriere du Trone, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, that terrible instrument of decapitation was in daily and ceaseless use.

In its victims “first the nobles and ecclesiastics only were included: by degrees the whole landed proprietors were reached; but now the work of destruction seemed to be approaching every class above the lowest. On the lists of the Revolutionary Tribunal, in the latter days of the Reign of Terror, are to be found tailors, shoemakers, hairdressers, butchers, farmers, mechanics, and workmen, accused of anti-revolutionary principles. From the loth of June to the I7th of July, that court had sentenced twelve hundred and eighty-five persons to death. The people felt pity for these proscriptions,- not only from their frequency, but their near approach to themselves. Their reason was at length awakened by the revolutionary fever having exhausted itself; humanity began to react against the cease-less effusion of human blood, after all their enemies had been destroyed It was impossible that pity should not at length be awakened in the breast of life spectators, for never had such scenes of woe been exhibited to the public gaze. ‘ The funeral cars,’ says the republican historian, Lamar-tine, ‘ often held together the husband, wife, and all their children. Their imploring visages, which mutually regarded each other with the tender expression of a last look, the heads of daughters falling on the knees of their mothers, of wives on the shoulders of their husbands, the ‘ pressure of heart against heart, both of which were so soon to cease to beat—now gray hairs and auburn locks cut by the same scissors, now wrinkled heads and charming visages falling under the same axe; the slow march of the cortege, the monotonous rolling of the wheels, the hedge of sabres around the procession, the stifled sobs of the victims, the hisses of the populace, the cries of the furies of the guillotine—all im-pressed a mournful character on these assassinations, which seemed to be provided for no other purpose but to serve for the pastime of the people.’ “3 ‘ “At Lyons the scaffold opposite the Hotel de Ville, where the trials were conducted, was kept in ceaseless employment. Around its bloody foundations large quantities of water were daily poured; but they were inadequate to wash away the ensanguined stains, or remove the fetid odour. So noxious did they become, that Dorfeuille, the functionary entrusted with the executions, was obliged to remove it to another situation; where it was placed directly above an open sewer, ten feet deep, which bore the gore away to the Rhone. The washerwomen there were obliged to change their station from the quantity of blood which became mingled with its waters. At length when the executions had risen to thirty or forty a day, the guillotine was placed in the middle of the bridge at Mo-rand in the centre of the Rhone, into which the stream of blood at once fell, and into which the headless trunks and severed heads were precipitated. Yet even this terrible slaughter, which went on without intermission for three months, appeared insufficient to the Jacobins.”

“At Nantes a Revolutionary Tribunal was formed under the direction of Carrier, and it soon outstripped even the rapid progress in atrocity of Damon and Robespierre. ‘ Their principle,’ says the Republican historian, ‘was, that it was necessary to destroy, en masse, all the prisoners. At their command was formed a corps called the Legion of Marat, composed of the most determined and bloodthirsty of the Revolutionists, the members of which were entitled, of their own authority, to incarcerate any person whom they chose. The number of their prisoners was soon between three and four thousand, and they divided among themselves all their property. Whenever a fresh supply of captives was wanted, the alarm was spread of a counter revolution, the generale beat, the cannon planted; and this was immediately followed by innumerable arrests. Nor were they long in disposing of the captives. The miserable wretches were either slain with poniards in the prisons, or carried out in a vessel and drowned by wholesale in the Loire. On one occasion, a hundred “fanatical priests,”as they were termed, were taken out together, stripped of their clothes, and precipitated into the waves. The same vessel served for many of these noyades ; and the horror expressed by many of the citizens for that mode of execution, formed the ground for fresh arrests and increased murders. Women big with child, children eight, nine and ten years of age, were thrown together into the. stream, on the banks of which, men armed with sabres were placed to cut them down, if the waves should throw them undrowned on the shore. The citizens, with loud shrieks, implored the lives of the little innocents, and numbers offered to adopt them as their own; but, though a few were granted to their urgent entreaty, the greater part were doomed to destruction. Thus were consigned to the grave whole generations at once—the ornament of the present, the hope of the future.’ So immense were the numbers of those who were cut off by the guillotine, or moved down by fusillades, that three hundred men were occupied for six weeks, in covering with earth the vast multitude of corpses that filled the trenches which had been cut in the Place of the Department at Nantes, to receive the dead bodies. Ten thousand died of disease, pestilence, and horror, in the prisons of that department alone.”2

“The noyades at Nantes alone amounted to twenty-five, on each of which occasions from eighty to a hundred and fifty persons perished; and such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of that river was infected so as to render a public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use of it by the inhabitants. No less than eighty thousand perished in these ways, or by the guillotine, in Nantes alone, during the administration of Carrier; and the mariners, when they heaved the anchors, frequently brought up boats charged with corpses. Birds of prey flocked to the shores, and fed on human flesh; while the very fish became so poisonous as to induce an order of the municipality of Nantes, prohibiting them to be taken by the fishermen.”3

“From Saumur to Nantes, a distance of sixty miles, the Loire was for several weeks red with human blood; the ensanguined stream, far at sea, ” divided the blue waves of the deep. The multitude of corpses it bore to the ocean was so prodigious that the adjacent coast was strewed with them; and a violent west wind and high tide having brought part of them back to Nantes, followed by a train of sharks and marine animals of prey, attracted by so prodigious an accumulation of human bodies, they were thrown ashore in vast numbers. Fifteen thousand persons perished there under the hands of the executioner, or of diseases in prison, in one month: the total victims of the Reign of Terror at that place exceeded thirty thousand.”

5. The overthrow of Roman Catholic governments, and enormous destruction of life connected with the -wars of Napoleon.— The reign of the guillotine was followed by the reign of the sword. With the rise of Napoleon, the French Revolution took a new character, and became the scourge of Europe. The armies of France were now led on an unparalleled career of conquest by that man who was the most “gigantic manifestation of mental power and despotic will “the world had ever seen. Arrogant, unscrupulous, selfish, remorseless, ambitious, self-reliant, with indomitable vigour, unwearying energy, marvellous military genius, surpassing administrative ability, uniting a lofty comprehensive intellect with utter disregard for moral considerations, Napoleon sacrificed the lives of millions, overturned the thrones of Europe, revived the Empire of Charlemagne, and strove to obtain the monarchy of the world.

His career as a ruler and conqueror consists of two chief periods : the first, that of his seizure of the reins of power as First Consul, followed by his Italian, German, Egyptian, and Syrian campaigns ; secondly, that commencing with his assumption of Imperial power in 1804, and extending to his fall in 1815, embracing the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland ; the long Peninsular war, the later wars in Italy, leading to the extinction of Papal authority; his struggle with Austria, his disastrous invasion of Russia; his last fatal war with Germany, and his final defeat by the Allied Powers at the Battle of Waterloo.

CAREER OF NAPOLEON

Born on the 15th of August, 1769, Napoleon was five years old at the accession of Louis XVI in 1774. After a military training, Napoleon, as an officer of Artillery, began his career by dispersing the National Guard of 30,000 men in Paris with grapeshot in October, 1795.

In 1796 he was sent to Italy by the French Directory, where he took Piedmont, Milan and Lombardy, quartering his troops on the unfortunate inhabitants, who were forced to pay the expenses of the war, including 20,000,000 francs exacted from Lombardy. On Pa via resisting, he took the town by storm, and abandoned it to plunder by his troops. The Duke of Parma was compelled to pay 1,500,000 francs, and the Duke of Modena 6,000,000 ; and 2,000,000 more in provisions, cattle, etc. He took Leghorn, where the merchants paid 5,000,000 for ransom, and 50,000,000 francs was forwarded from these wars of plunder in North Italy to the French Directory. Milan having been evacuated by the Austrians, Napoleon seized from the Pope Bologna and Ferrara, and compelled Pius VI to pay 15,000,000 livres in gold, 6,000,000 more in goods, and to permit the spoliation of works of art and manuscripts which were sent to Paris. On Austria preparing a fresh army for the recovery of Lombardy of fifty to sixty thousand men, Napoleon in six weeks destroyed it in detail. A third army was sent into Italy by Austria, the same year (1796), of 50,000 men, which Napoleon succeeded in dividing and conquering. He then regulated internal affairs in North Italy, forming a republic. The Pope, after paying 5,000,000 livres, stopped payment, while Austria, reinforcing her army by 50,000 men, continued the struggle, but was defeated with immense loss. The condition of North Italy was miserable in the extreme, both armies treating the nation as enemies. On all hands the people were plundered, and when they resisted, killed.

Secure from the Austrians, Napoleon turned against the Pope, and in- vaded Ancona, the Marches, and Tolentina. Pius VI sued for peace, and was forced to pay 15,000,000 livres within a month, and as much more in two months. He was permitted to remain in Rome a little longer.

The Austrians now raised a new army, chiefly recruits. General Bernadotte, with 20,000 men from the Rhine Provinces, reinforced Napoleon, who conquered the Austrians, and advanced through the Tyrol and Upper Styria to within eight days’ march of Vienna. The Austrian Emperor sued for peace, and ceded to Napoleon the Austrian Netherlands and Lombardy, who promised him, by a secret treaty Venice, in part compensation. The Doge resigned. Thus ended the republic of Venice: after fourteen centuries of existence, and with it the naval power of Italy became extinct. Genoa paid 4,000,000 livres to the Directory in Paris, f and had her constitution remodelled to a republic. All Italy, excepting Naples, was now in subjection to France.

In December, 1797, Napoleon, returning from his wars in Italy, was received with acclamation in Paris.

1798. In pursuance of his plan of world conquest, Napoleon made an expedition to Egypt. Malta surrendered, and the spoliation of its churches took place. On March 29th, 5,000 Mamelukes were defeated by Napoleon at Alexandria. The French fleet was destroyed by Nelson. The Sultan declared war against France. In Cairo there was a terrible massacre of Mussulmans by French troops. With 10,000 men Napoleon crossed the desert, by Suez, to Palestine. Jaffa was given up to plunder, with frightful horrors, and the Turkish prisoners were massacred wholesale. The defense of Acre followed. After fifty-four days from opening the trenches, Napoleon was compelled to raise the siege, and return to Egypt. He reached Cairo I4th June.

1799. “With 10,000 men on the banks of the Euphrates,”said Napoleon, “I might have gone to Constantinople or to India, and have changed the face of the world. I should have founded an Empire in the .Hast, and the world would have run a different course.”

Towards the end of July, the Turkish fleet landed 18,000 men at Aboukir, near Alexandria. Napoleon attacked them, and 10,000 Turks perished by the bayonet, or the sea. The victory of Aboukir on the 17th June, 1799, closed the Egyptian campaign, and Napoleon returned to I’Vance.

In Paris he arbitrarily dissolved the Assembly of 500, and was made first of three Consuls. He reopened the Roman Catholic Churches, which bad been closed in the Revolution. 1800,

Crossing the St. Bernard pass with his troops, Napoleon defeated the Austrians at Marengo ; Piedmont and Genoa were given up to France.

1801. Napoleon appoints the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in France; and arranges that the incumbents should be approved by civil authority. All convents were abolished.

1802. Napoleon was appointed Consul for life. He immediately re- duced the number in the Senate. Switzerland supplied 16,000 men for the service of France, and Napoleon became Mediator of the Helvetic League. The Civil Code Napoleon was drawn up.

1804. Tragedy of the Duke D’Enghein.—On the l8th of May, Napoleon was crowned as Emperor. Pius VII was compelled to be present at the coronation, and blessed the crown, while Napoleon put it on his own head. He then changed the Italian republics into monarchies. At Milan he crowned himself with the iron crown of the Lombard kings.

1805. Napoleon’s campaign in Germany. A new coalition of England, Russia, Austria and Sweden was formed against him. On the 2d of December, 1805, he gained the great battle of Austerlitz, the loss of the allies was tremendous. Multitudes perished in a frozen lake. Austria gave up the Venetian provinces to Italy, and the Tyrol to Bavaria.

Napoleon then united the provinces of Germany as the Confederation of the Rhine, placing himself at the head. He dissolved the old German Empire. Thus ended the “Holy Roman Empire,”after an existence of 1,000 years. In October of 1805 was fought the battle of Trafalgar.

1806. Having made his brother Joseph .king of Naples and Sicily, Napoleon attacked the Prussians, defeating them at Anerstadt and Jena. The Prussians gave up the fortresses of Magdeburg, Spandau, and others. Napoleon entered Berlin 2ist October. Turning to Poland, he occupied Warsaw. A winter campaign against Russia followed. At the battle of Friedland he defeated the Russians, and agreed that Russia should take Finland. He then sent Junot to take Portugal. In Italy Napoleon annexed the Marches, or Adriatic provinces, to his kingdom of Italy. His troops invade Rome ; Napoleon telling the Pope that he regarded himself as the successor of Charlemagne, and therefore King of Italy.

Invading Spain, Napoleon occupied Madrid, where he made his brother Joseph “King of Spain and the Indies.”

The seven years Peninsular war followed. Six hundred thousand French troops enter Spain; only 250,000 return to France. Loss of Spaniards incalculable.

1809. New Austrian war. Napoleon conquers in the battle of Eckmaul, and enters Vienna. He wins the battle of Aspern. In the great battle of Wagram, he defeats the Austrians, great loss on both sides.

Napoleon divorcing his lawful wife, Josephine, marries the daughter of the Emperor Francis of Austria.

The Pope was taken as a prisoner to Savona, and thence to Fontain- bleau, and the Papal territory divided.

1810-1811. Period of Napoleon’s greatest power. French Empire extends from Denmark to Naples. Population of France 42,000,000. Population of the new French Empire of Napoleon 80,000,000.

At that period Austria and Russia were Napoleon’s allies. In Sweden he placed his General Bernadotte on the throne. Spain was bleeding at every pore from the effects of the Peninsular war. Britain alone defied the power of the great conqueror.

1812. Napoleon’s Russian campaign. With an enormous army, consisting of 270,000 French; 80,000 Germans from the Rhine Confederation, 30,000 Poles, and 20,000 Prussians, Napoleon invaded Russia, advancing as far as Moscow, which the Russians evacuated and burned. The disastrous French retreat succeeded, in which 125,000 were slain; 132,000 died of fatigue, hunger, disease and cold; 193,000 were made prisoners, the loss including 3,000 officers, and forty-eight generals. The Russians lost 308,000 men.

Returning with the remnant of his troops to Germany, Napoleon won the battle of Lutzen, against Prussians and Russians united. A series of battles at Dresden followed, and a disastrous defeat of the French army at Leipsic : 25,000 French were made prisoners of war. Napoleon reached the Rhine with seventy or eighty thousand out of an army of 350,000. Returning to France, he issued a new conscription for 300,000 men. But the allied armies entered Paris before he could reach it, and compelled Napoleon to abdicate on the 4th of April, 1814; assigning to him the Island of Elba. A conspiracy for his restoration to France followed. Napoleon escaped from Elba, assembled rapidly an army of 125,000 men, of which 25,000 were cavalry. He attacked Blucher.

1815. The Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon defeated by the allied armies ; great loss on both sides. Thus closed a series of,wars which had lasted twenty- three years. During ten years, Napoleon raised by conscription two millions, one hundred and seventy-three thousand men (2,173,000), of whom two-thirds perished in foreign lands, or were maimed for life.

On Napoleon’s second abdication, on the 22d of June, 1815, he was sent as a prisoner to the Island of St. Helena, where after an imprisonment of nearly six years, he died of cancer in the stomach, May 5, 1821. On the night of his death there was a terrible storm in the island, trees being torn up by the roots.

Reviewing the career of Napoleon “it may safely be admitted that not only in his power of combination—of embracing in one harmonious plan a great number of distant and independent elements,—but also of watching over and directing, at one and the same time, the complicated movements of mighty armies, the tone of the public press, the operations of foreign and domestic commerce, in addition to the endless intricacies and details of his system of policy, and tile great measures of his government, not merely in France, but through the whole extent of his vast empire— he was unequalled by any commander or sovereign that ever lived. . . . No other sovereign of whom history makes mention, ever maintained himself, even for a single day, against such a combination of gigantic powers: yet Napoleon not only maintained himself, but for twelve years, was constantly adding to his dominions in the’face of an opposition as was never before or since arrayed against any single ruler . . . with all his sagacity, he committed the stupendous error, of supposing that he could, in the nineteenth century, hold Europe in subjection by the mere force of his intellect and will, without the exercise of any strictly moral attributes, and without laying the foundations of his power in the affections of his people.”

SUMMARY Retributive character of the French Revolution.

Viewed as a whole, the French Revolution presents in its destructive effects, a spectacle of Divine Judgment without a parallel in human history. Terrible as was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, even it sinks into a secondary place when compared with the wholesale slaughter by massacre and war which accompanied this fearful modern judgment, affecting not only the whole of France, but all the surrounding nations of Europe.

In letters of flame across the movement, is written the word Retribution.

France, the France of St Bartholomew, of the wars of the Huguenots, of the siege of La Rochelle, of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of the suppression of the Jansenists, of the destruction of Port Royal, the France which had cast out with sublime folly and inhuman cruelty, the gospel and the Saints of God, was visited with a plague of infidelity and immorality, like an ulcerous sore, covering the nation from head to foot. The proud and tyrannical monarchy, which had persecuted and banished the Huguenots was overthrown and abolished in a national convulsion of revolutionary crime and excess in which all restraints of law and order, human and divine, were relaxed and dissolved; government delivered into the hands of sanguinary wretches; monarchy brought to the scaffold; aristocracy abolished, estates confiscated or plundered; the nobles slain or exiled; youth, talent, beauty ruthlessly sacrificed: prisons glutted with victims; rivers choked with corpses; churches desecrated; priests slaughtered; religion suppressed; an infidel calendar substituted for the week with its sabbath; and the worship of a harlot as the goddess of Reason for the worship of the host on the altars of the Church of Rome. In France was beheld the reign of infidelity, anarchy, and the guillotine; while from France were communicated to surrounding Europe the fires of revolution and an anti-ecclesiastical mania that has never since been allayed. Nor was this all, for democratic revolution was succeeded by military despotism• the horrors of massacre by the horrors of war. All Europe was involved in the far-reaching conflagration. Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Russia were one after another invaded by the bloodthirsty armies of France, led by a resistless conqueror, eclipsing in his military powers the Alexanders and Csesars of antiquity. The Catholic nations which had warred for centuries against the Reformed faith were successively crushed under the feet of this ruthless despot; thrones overturned, crowns trampled in the dust; armies scattered; cities pillaged; provinces wasted with war; and reduced to desolation.

The Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Catholic Church were prostrated by the tornado; the Imperial and Papal powers overthrown in common ruin. Side by side they had stood supreme for a thousand years; and both were abolished. The Holy Roman Empire which had risen with Charlemagne, which had revived the Imperial power of the Caesars—combined Germany, Italy and France in a single empire, and maintained its existence under a long succession of rulers, with varying fortunes through the Middle Ages, and the succeeding centuries of the Reformation; the empire which had warred against and crushed the Hussites with barbaric cruelties; which had stood as the pillar of the Papacy in the days of Luther; which had inflicted on Germany the horrors of the thirty years’ war in the time of Gustavus Adolphus; was now in a series of sanguinary conflicts stripped of its Italian territories, driven back bleeding at every pore from the plains of Lombardy, and then, as an Imperial power, totally suppressed, and brought to nought. In Germany, divided into a host of petty principalities, the “Confederation of the Rhine”was formed, which, contrary to all that was intended by Napoleon, was destined, together with the contemporaneous growth of Prussia, to lead to the rise of the German Empire, and to the subsequent victories over Roman Catholic Austria and France of Sadowa and Sedan.

Piedmont, in northern Italy, which had all but exterminated the Waldenses, and turned their wild and lonely valleys into a slaughter- house, was overrun by merciless invaders, and filled with the horrors of ruthless spoliation and bloodshed. The Pope of Rome, stripped of his possessions, his temporal government abolished, was carried captive to die in a foreign land, and Rome given up to plunder and desecration.

Spain, which had crushed the Reformation within in her own borders, and in other lands, by the horrors of the In-i quisition, and the Auto da Fe, was delivered over to the dreadful bloodshed and miseries of the seven years Peninsular war: the Inquisition suppressed; and a revolutionary spirit awakened which has made the country since the threatre of endless strife, disaster, and decay.

And then the guilty powers which had wrought the widespread havoc were arrested and destroyed. All the revolutionary leaders in France came to miserable ends. The nations of Europe combined against the military despot who sought to become the master of the world; the powers of Nature fought against him; the sands of the Syrian desert, the snows of Russia, the waves of the ocean rose up to arrest his progress; his armies scattered, his fleets destroyed, he was compelled to abdicate, and chained like an eagle to a rock in mid ocean, was left to contemplate the ruin of all that he had planned and wrought, and the triumph of the powers he had once defeated and despised. 4 “The Lord is known by the judgment which He executed! the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands.

II. Influence of the French Revolution on the Interpretation of Prophecy.

The effect of the French Revolution on prophetic interpretation has been profound and lasting. It has inaugurated a new era in the interpretation of the Apocalypse. Men have lived to see the accomplishment of the judgments on Papal Christendom so long foretold, and so long expected; and, while trembling at the view, have had new hopes kindled within them, respecting the nearness of the promised kingdom of God. In studying the works on prophecy written since the commencement of the Revolution by Bichino, Galloway, Faber, Cunninghame, Frere, Irving, Fuller, Croly, Habershon, Keith, Bickersteth, Brooks, Birks, Elliott and many others, one seems to hear the prolonged reverberation of the seventh trumpet of the Apocalypse— the great trumpet of Judgment and of Jubilee.

In 1794, the year following that of the Reign of Terror, Bichino published his work on “The signs of the times, or the overthrow of the Papal tyranny in France, the prelude of destruction to popery and despotism, but of peace to mankind.”The preface is dated January 19, 1793, only two days before the execution of Louis XVI. Three leading conclusions dominate Bichino’s treatise : (1) that the perse- cuting wild beast power of the Apocalypse is chiefly represented by the French monarchy ; (2) that this power had slain the Witnesses by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, while God had raised them from the dead in the persons of their successors; (3) that the prophetic period of 1,260 years measuring the domination of the Papacy had been fulfilled. Reckoned from its commencing point at Justinian’s decree, conferring on the Bishop of Rome the universal oversight of the Christian Church in the year 529, the period had expired in 1789, the opening year of the French Revolution. More correct computations adopted since Bichino’s time place Justinian’s decree in the year 533, and make the 1,260 years terminate in 1793, the central year of the Reign of Terror. “My mind has of late,”says Bichino, “been much affected with the appearance of things in the Christian world, and the occurrences which have, within these few years, burst upon us; occurrences which are unparalleled in the history of nations.”He then refers to the striking fulfilment of Sir Isaac Newton’s conjecture “that the overbearing tyranny and power of the antichristian party which hath so long corrupted Christianity, and enslaved the Christian world, must be put a stop to, and broken to pieces by the prevalence of ‘infidelity”, for some time before primitive Christianity could be restored; “and refers to Whiston’s observation in 1744, that the infidelity Sir Isaac Newton expected seemed to be ” the very means now working in Europe for the same good and great work of Providence.” In turning over the pages of Bichino’s work, one seems to see the awful sufferings and hear the heartrending groans of the persecuted Huguenots under Louis XIV. The noble French preachers, Saurin and Claude, tell us of the horrors their eyes had seen; “now,”says Saurin, as quoted by Bichino, “we were banished, then we were forbidden to quit the kingdom on pain of death. Here we saw the glorious rewards of those who betrayed their religion; and there we beheld those who I had the courage to confess it haled to a dungeon, a scaffold, or a galley. Here we saw our persecutors drawing on a sledge the dead bodies of those who had expired on the rack, there we beheld a false friar tormenting a dying man, who was terrified on the one hand with the fear of hell if he apostatized, and on the other with the fear of leaving his children without bread if he should continue in the faith.”When the arguments of priests failed, cruel soldiers were quartered in their houses, to exert their skill in torments to compel them to become Catholics. “They cast some,” says Claude, “into large fires, and took them out when they were half roasted, they hanged others with ropes under their armpits and plunged them into wells till they promised to renounce their religion; they tied them like criminals on the rack, and poured wine with a funnel into their mouths, till, being intoxicated, they promised to turn Catholics. Some they slashed and cut with pen-knives; some they took by the nose with red-hot tongs, and led them up and down the rooms till they promised to turn Catholics. These cruel proceedings made eight hundred thousand persons quit the kingdom.”This system of persecution remained more or less in force till it was over- thrown in 1789.

My eyes fall while I write on a venerable witness to the truth of these accounts. A grand old Huguenot Bible lies before me, a folio volume printed in La Roxhelle in 1606. Its antiquated French title is as follows : “La Bible, qui est Toute la saincte escriture du Vieil et du Nouveau Testament ; autrement L’ancienne et la Nouvelle Alliance, le tout reveu et confere sur les textes Hebrieux et Grecs par les Pasteurs, et Professeurs de Feglise de Geneve.”A figure of a winged woman adorns the title-page. She is represented as leaning on a cross, trampling on a prostrate skeleton, and upholding in her hand a book with the title “Religion Chrestiene.”The Huguenot metrical version of the Psalms, with their tunes printed in square shaped semi-breves, is appended to the volume, and also a simple and scriptural Liturgy. The leather binding is almost black with age, and seems to show by its look, and that of the discoloured edges, that the book must have been long concealed in some Huguenot chimney, and embrowned by smoke. On opening the venerable Book, my eyes fall on the verses relating to the Witnesses: “Et quand ils auront acheve leurtesmoignage, la beste qui monte de 1’abisme fera guerre cont’eux, et les vaincra, et les tuera. Et leur corps morts seront gisans es places de la grand cite, qui est appelee spirituellement Sodome et Egypte, la ou aussi nostre Seigneur a este crucifie . . . mais apres ces trios jours-la et demi, 1’esprit de vie venant de Dieu entrera en eux, et ils se tiendront sur leurs pieds, et grande crainte saisira ceux qui les auront veus . . . Le second mal-heur est passe, et voici, le troisieme malheur viendra bientost. Le Septienne Ange done sonna de la trompette, et furent faites grandes voix au ciel, disans, Les royaumes du monde sent reduits a nostre Seigneur et a son Christ, et il regenera es siecles des siecles.”Did you behold from your heights of glory, O ye Huguenot sufferers, the inauguration of that great predicted event? Did you witness its awful commencement, you spirits of the just made perfect; you martyrs and confessors of that noble army of those who for the sake of Christ and the Gospel ” loved not their lives even unto death”? Did you behold the judgments of God poured forth on that Papal France which had been guilty of your blood? Ye knew her prisons well; did you rejoice to see that terrible Bastile overthrown, where stands today the lofty column with the golden Statue of Liberty shining on its summit? France would have none of you; she shed your blood in torrents; she forced you into exile; what thought ye of the tremendous overthrow of her monarchy and Church in the French Revolution? Were ye of those holy beings, those victors over “the beast, and his image, and his mark,”who stood on “a sea of glass mingled with fire”having “the harps of God,”and who when the golden girded angels were sent forth from the Temple of God’s glory and power, to pour out the vials of his wrath on the beast, and his worshippers, and on Babylon the great, drunken with the blood of saints, and martyrs, sang the triumphant song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and marvellous are Thy works, O Lord God Almighty ; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints; who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name ? For Thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before Thee, for Thy judg- ments are made manifest.”

Surely you were there in that shining host of victors, ye blessed, martyred witnesses of the Lamb.

With many deep emotions I handle the venerable and sacred volume which remains as a visible memento of your faith and sufferings. Turning to its last page, written on the inside of the iron- bound cover, I decipher the record of a baptism, containing the” names of the baptized,—the near relations, and the officiating” Minstre de 1’evangile,”with the touching words, “ fait aux desert,” celebrated in the wilderness—and the date 1745; the time of the Eglise du desert. Sweet and simple record of suffering experiences at the close of those days during which the Woman clothed with the sun, and crowned with stars, was hidden in the wilderness from her persecutors, fed there, like Elijah, by the Providence of God; and sustained by the words of the Book, its words of consolation and Eternal Life. One wonders what that woman shall be like, when she comes forth from the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her Beloved, arrayed in the pure linen of spotless righteousness, “having the glory of God “; with the Father’s name shining on her forehead, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband ? Shall she remember her past in that day of gladness, and bless “the hand that guided, and the heart that planned, when throned where glory dwelleth, in Im-manuel’s land”? Yes; nought shall be forgotten. Ye shall “remember all the way”by which God led you through the wilderness, to bring you to the better land. And all the bitter tears of your earthly sorrows shall be wiped away. O wondrous music of your gladness; me-thinks even now I can catch from afar some faint sounding of its thrilling strain.

“THE SEVENTH TRUMPET SOUNDED”

They had reached this glorious and dread event. Such was the conviction of the Apocalyptic interpreters at the time of the French Revolution. Its terrible thunders could be heard rolling in the dark firmament overhead. Surely this was the end of the great’ apostasy; the end of the gigantic fabric of antichnstian power now falling on every side, like the ruins of some vast structure held in the grasp of roaring and relentless flames.

What was to follow? Did the Apocalyptic interpreters, who witnessed these great and terrible events, expect the immediate advent of the Kingdom of God? They did not, for they knew that the destruction of the Apostate Papal Empire was to be accomplished, not by one single act, but by a series of judgments under the outpouring of the seven vials, contained in the seventh trumpet; vials which were the evolution of the “third,”and “last woe.”Bichino, for example, in his “Signs of the Times,”says as regards the contents of the seventh trumpet, “we are not to understand that on the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the kingdom of universal righteousness, peace and happiness is instantly to commence; but that that great scene now opens which is to prepare the way for it.”

An old copy of Galloway’s work on the Apocalypse lies before me. Its date is 1802. The author had witnessed the horrors of the French Revolution, and writes as profoundly affected by what he had seen. He recoils from it as from some hideous spectre. “This monster,”he says, speaking of the Jacobin Club, “directed all the operations and explosions of the revolution. It everywhere appointed the most active leaders, and as instruments employed the profligates of every country. Its power far surpassed that which has been attached to the Inquisition, and other fiery tribunals, by those who have spoken of them with the greatest exaggeration. Its centre was at Paris, whilst clubs in every town, in every little borough, overspread the surface of the whole kingdom. The constant correspondence kept up between these clubs, and that of the capital, was as secret and as speedy as that of freemasonry. In a word, the Jacobin Club had prevailed in causing themselves to be looked up to as the real national representative. Under that pretense they censured all the authorities in the most imperious manner. And whenever their denunciations, petitions, or addresses failed to produce immediate effect, they gained their point by insurrections, assassinations, and fire.”

At its nod a horde of banditti started up in the several provinces, plundering, prostrating and burning the castles and archives of the seignoral nobility, and the mansions of men of all ranks. At its nod the most bloody civil wars were kindled, in which no quarter was given on either side, whilst France became a field of blood—and was made “one great tomb.”Galloway sees in these judgments the outpouring of the earlier vials of the Apocalypse. An awful gloom overspreads his pages, only relieved by the hope that the year 1866 would witness the end of Papal power, the termination of its 1,260 years as reckoned from the decree of Phocas in A . D . 606 —7.; and the advent of a better order of things destined to usher in the Kingdom of God.

From Galloway’s work I turn to Faber’s “Dissertation on the Prophecies,”published in 1805. He too, writes as an eye-witness of the French Revolution. On the 12th of August, 1792, he tells us, the Jacobins, who counted 300,000 adepts, and were supported by 2,000,000 men scattered through France, armed with torches and pikes, and all the necessary implements of revolution,”overthrew the French monarchy, and inaugurated the reign of Terror. “On this memorable day,”he says, “I conceive the Third woe trumpet to have begun its tremendous blast.””As the first of these days witnessed the abolition of all the distinctions of civil society, so the second beheld the establishment of atheism by law. A decree was then passed ordering the clergy to leave the kingdom within a fortnight after its date, but instead of allowing them the time specified, even by their own decree, the Jacobin tyrants of France employed the whole of that period in seizing, imprisoning, and putting them to the most cruel deaths.”

The very treatment which Louis XIV had given to the ministers of the French Protestant Church in 1685, was now inflicted by the infidel Jacobins in 1792 on the priests of the French Roman Catholic Church:—they were ordered to leave the kingdom in a fortnight, and massacred by the way. We know not how many of the Huguenot pastors perished at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, hut we know that 24,000 priests were massacred in the French Revolution, and 2,000,000 persons murdered in France. Thus had the vengeance of God begun to “destroy them that destroy the earth,”to bring to an end, the tyrannical and persecuting rule of Rome. Faber’s book seems to vibrate with the earthquake shocks of the Revolution it describes. In reading it one seems to feel the throes of the awful convulsion of which the author had been the witness.

From Faber we turn to Cunninghame. The sounding of the seventh trumpet in the French Revolution is the principal theme of his remarkable work on the Apocalypse, written in 1812. “There have been,”says Cunninghame, “only three great Revolutions of the Roman Empire in the west, from the ascension of our Lord to the present period. The first was that in the age of Constantine, whereby the religion of the state was changed from Paganism to Christianity. The second was at the period of the Reformation, and it shook Europe to its foundations. The third is the Revolution which began in France in the year 1789, and having by its first vibration overthrown the monarchy of the Bourbons in the year 1792, has from that period to the present continued to agitate Europe.””The seventh trumpet sounded at the fall of the French monarchy in 1792.””This trumpet comprises within itself the whole of the seven vials of wrath, which are the constituent parts of the third woe.”

Cunninghame gives an extract from a letter which he had received from the celebrated Andrew Fuller, of Kettering, who says, ” I am fully persuaded that this is the period of the pouring out of the vials. The seventh trumpet seems to me to have sounded about the time of the French Revolution, and to wear a double aspect: 1st, of wrath towards Antichrist, I mean the grand Papal apostasy in all its branches ; 2d, of mercy towards the Church, and even the world, in- as much as it was the signal of “the kingdoms of this world becoming those of the Lord and His Christ.”Hence I conceive the period of the vials is also a period to be distinguished by the spread of the gospel, This view is more fully developed in Andrew Fuller’s posthumous work on the Apocalypse, published in 1815. In its preface he says, ” The manuscript has lain by me between four and five years, during which I have frequently examined its contents, and availed myself of any further light which by reading or reflection has appeared on the subject.”On page 192 he says, “If the sounding of the seventh angel form an era in the Christian Church, it requires that we pause, and pay particular attention to it. The contents of this trumpet are of deeper interest than any that have preceded it, both to the enemies of the Church, and to the Church itself. It wears a twofold aspect. Towards the enemies of the Church it is a woe-trumpet, and a signal of mighty vengeance: towards the Church itself it is a harbinger of joy, a kind of jubilee-trumpet, announcing the year of enlargement; for when the seventh angel sounded, 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 forever and ever.”

Under the first of these aspects it includes the seven last plagues, which are but so many subdivisions of it under the last aspect it comprehends all the success of the gospel previous to and during the Millennium, with all the glorious results of it as described in the remainder of the prophecy. We are not to consider it, however, under either of these aspects as being more than a signal of things which are to follow. As the vengeance will not all be poured forth at once, so neither will the kingdoms of this world at once become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; but from the sounding of Ms trumpet both shall have a commencement^ and both be singularly progressive under it.”

Frere, a gifted contemporaneous writer, whose “Combined View”of the prophecies was published in 1815, states in its preface that he had “for about seventeen years been increasingly impressed with a sense of the, importance of the period of the world in which we live.”Though differing in some respects from the views of Faber and Cunninghame, he was at one with them in considering that the seventh trumpet had sounded in the French Revolution, that the seven vials were included under it, and that their outpouring was for the purpose of the destruction of the Roman Empire as a preparation for the advent of the Kingdom of Christ. This he shows in a historical and chronological diagram at the commencement of his work. He divides the history of the Roman Empire into three periods: “First, the period of its strength as a republic, and under its emperors. Secondly, the period of its weakness, when divided into ten kingdoms. Thirdly, the period of its destruction; “and considers tha ” the three successive periods in the history of the Church during the same space of time are those in which it is opposed by its three great enemies, the Pagan, Papal, and Infidel powers “; and that “the period of the destruction of the empire is the same as the period of Infidelity in the history of the Church.”Broad and comprehensive views these, and well deserving our consideration.

The celebrated preacher, Edward Irving, published in the year 1826 a work on “Babylon and Infidelity Fore-doomed of God,”which he dedicated to Frere. In the preface he acknowledges that it was through Frere’s teachings he was led to the view “that the Apocalypse is a narrative of events running on in regular historical order.”There is so much of humility, and such a tone of deep conviction in Irving’s words that we cannot refrain from quoting them.

“To my beloved friend and brother in Christ, Hatley Frere, Esq:

“When I first met you, worthy sir, in a company of friends, and, moved I know not by what, asked you to walk forth into the fields, that we might commune together, while the rest enjoyed their social converse, you seemed to me as one who dreamed, while you opened in my ear your views of the present times, as foretold in the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse. But being ashamed of my own ig-jporance, and having been blessed from my youth with the desire of instruction, I dared not to scoff at what I heard, but resolved to consider the matter. More than a year passed before it pleased Providence to bring us together again, at the house of the same dear friend and brother in the Lord, when you answered so sweetly and temperately the objections made to your views, that I was more and more struck with the outward tokens of a calm and sincere believer in truth. And I was again ashamed at my own ignorance, and again resolved to consider the matter. After which I had no rest in my spirit, until I waited upon you and offered myself as your pupil, to be instructed in prophecy according to your ideas thereof. And for the ready good-will with which you undertook, and the patience with which you performed this kind office, I am forever beholden to you, most kind and worthy friend.

“As becometh one that is ignorant towards his teacher, I received without cavilling, and endeavoured to comprehend the whole scheme and substance of your interpretation, both of Daniel and the Apocalypse; and then withdrew to consider and try the matter by the two great criterions,—the structure of the books themselves, and the correspondence with the events which had been fulfilled ; adding a careful consideration of the discursive prophecies also^ which cast many cross-lights upon the subject. Now I am not ashamed to confess, that, at first, my mind fell away from the system of interpretation, which, with Mede and Moore, and other exact interpreters, you have followed, and inclined to the simple idea, that the Apocalypse is a narrative of events running on in regular historical order, Nor was it till after your system of interpretation had de- composed itself in my mind, that it gradually recomposed itself, under a more patient and assiduous consideration of the subject. Which I mention, because I believe it to be the true way in which this or any other subject ought to be studied, and in which I wish this discourse to be read; with the humility of one who desireth to comprehend the whole matter, then to be weighed apart from the authority of a teacher, and the forms of his arguments, and so expect the approval or disapproval of the conscience expected and waited for. I mention it, moreover, in order publicly to declare my acknowledgments to you, most kind and generous friend. For I am not willing that any one should account of me, as if I were worthy to have had revealed to me the important truths contained in this discourse, which may all be found written in your treatise on the prophecies of Daniel: only the Lord accounted me worthy to receive the faith of those things, which He had first made known to you, his more worthy servant. And if He make me the instrument of conveying that faith to any of His Church, that they may make themselves ready for His coming, or to any of the world, that they may take refuge in the ark of His salvation from the deluge of wrath which abideth the impenitent, to His name shall all the praise and glory be ascribed by me, His unworthy servant, who, through mercy, dareth to subscribe himself,

“Your brother in the bond of the Spirit, and the desire of the Lord’s coming.

“EDWARD IRVING .”

To Irving the conviction that, to use his own words, “the ending of the 1,260 years was in the year 1792, the year of the French Revolution,”and that at that date the seventh trumpet had sounded, was one which profoundly affected him, and one which he embodied in eloquent and moving sermons on the prophecies which sometimes lasted as much as two and a half hours. All London flocked to listen to his orations, and an interest was awakened in prophetic studies whose effects have never ceased. There was a want of balance in his temperament, and “a prodigious want of tact “in his lengthy prayers and sermons, but the strength of his convictions, and his singular eloquence, were unquestionable. “Irving,”says Chalmers, “is very impressive, and I do like the force and richness of his conversation.”There can be no doubt that he was a witness of important truths to his day and generation; but a warning, too, of the dangers attending speculation on coming events, and reliance on interior impressions as a source of divine revelation. The rock on which he struck is indicated by the wreck that remains of his work and influence, but his life was given to the service of Christ, and his death was hallowed by a sacred sense of his Master’s presence. The last utterance which fell from his lips was a quotation of the words of the great apostle of the Gentiles, “Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord.”Faintly came the parting sentence, “If I die, I die unto the Lord. Amen.”

Irving died in December, 1834. In the same year Habershon published his “Dissertation on the prophetic Scriptures, chiefly those of a chronological character, showing their aspect on the present times, and on the destinies of the Jewish nation.”

His sober mind sought to build on the terra firma of historical and chronological facts, and his chart of scripture history and prophecy is in advance of any that had previously appeared. In his view the sounding of the seventh trumpet indicates “the fall of’ Mohammedanism and Popery.”The terminal period of the prophetic times was in his judgment the interval extending from the French Revolution in 1793 to the yet future year 1918—9.

The excellent Edward Bickersteth, who published the first edition of his valuable and often reprinted “Guide to the Prophecies,” as early as 1823, held like Habershon “that the first great blow to Popery was in 1793, the French Revolution, and the date of the first close of the 1,260 days.””Daniel gives us,”he says, “two further periods of thirty and forty-five years longer. At the close of the thirty years, 1822-3, the first French Revolution having ended, the sixth vial began in the independence of Greece, and the wasting of the Turkish Empire. At the close of the seventy-five years we reach 1868.”The year thus indicated proved to be that of the summoning of the Eccumenical Council, which met in December, 1869, and affirmed the Infallibility of the Pope on the 18th of July, 1870. The Franco- Prussian war, and the fall of the Papal Temporal Sovereignty followed that event with startling suddenness. It was the long- predicted end of the Papal Temporal power.

The prophetical works of Cunninghame and Bickersteth had a marked effect on the mind of that great and good man, Dr. Chalmers. The following letter from him to Edward Bickersteth written on February 17, 1836, “is interesting in itself, and still more for the sympathy it discovers between two men so variously gifted, and honoured above most in their own day, in the diffusion of Divine truth.”

“February 17th, 1836. “MY DEAR SIR,

“I should have acknowledged much sooner the receipt of your kind note, and of the precious volume which accompanied it. I am now reading it with great interest, and think I shall accord more fully with its views than with those of any author I have yet read, who has ventured on the field of unfulfilled prophecy. I lately finished the perusal of all Mede” s, and of all Cunninghame’s prophetical works, and certainly have been much impressed by them. I sympathize, however, far more with your doubts, than I do with his decision, on the subject of a personal reign. But of this, on the general, I am well satisfied, that the next coming (whether in person or not, I forbear to say) will be a coming, not to the final judgment, but to precede and usher in the millennium. I utterly despair of the universal prevalence of Christianity, as the result of a pacific missionary process, under the guidance of human wisdom and principle. But without slackening in the least our obligation to help forward this great cause, I look for the conclusive establishment through a widening passage of desolating judg- ments, with the utter demolition of our present civil and ecclesiastical structures.

“Let me advert to the practical character and unction of your work, as stamping an additional virtue upon it; being throughout a powerful address to the conscience, instead of a mere entertainment, which too many of our works of prophecy are, to the curiosity of men.

“I am, my dear sir,
“Yours most gratefully and respectfully, “THOMAS CHALMERS .”

The Rev. S. W. Brooks, the author of “Abdiel’s Essays on the Advent and Kingdom of Christ,”wrote, at Bicker-steth’s suggestion, a work on the “Elements of Prophetical Interpretation,”in which he advocates with great force the view that the French Revolution inaugurated the period of the outpouring of the seven vials destined to destroy the. Apocalyptic beast, and Babylon the great. He also edited in the years 1831-6 a valuable prophetic journal entitled the Investigator and Expositor of Prophecy containing important articles by Cunninghame and Birks on the prophetic times, and reviews of works on prophecy, etc. Appended to the fifth volume is a most comprehensive “dictionary of writers on the prophecies,”occupying more than too pages.

In 1843, the Rev. T.R.Birks, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, published his “First Elements of Sacred Prophecy” followed by many other valuable works on prophetic subjects. For clearness of statement and cogency of argument, I know of no writings in the whole range of prophetic literature to be compared with those of Mr. Birks. In his later years he occupied the position of Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.

Like Bickersteth, whose eldest daughter he married, and whose memoir he wrote, he held that the outpouring of the seven vials had commenced with the French Revolution, and that we have reached the era of the destruction of the fourth and last Gentile Empire, and are rapidly approaching the period of the Lord’s Second Advent.

In 1844 the Rev. E. B. Elliott of Brighton, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, published the first edition of his “Horae Apocalypticae,”a learned and laborious commentary on the book of Revelations in four volumes, dedicated to the Earl of Shaftesbury. For twenty years Mr. Elliott had studied the subject, and he produced a work of standard value, which for more than half a century has re- mained without a rival in its own peculiar field.

The late Dr. Candlish, of Edinburgh, who had a wide acquaintance with theological literature, and was no mean judge of such matters, in a lecture on “The Pope the Antichrist of Scripture,” named in “a host of modern authorities “”as among the most learned, profound and able expositors any of the body of Scripture have ever had,—Elliott in England, and Gaussen in Geneva.”Dn Gumming, of London, whose numerous works on prophecy are widely known, stated it as his view that Elliott’s “Horse “occupied a place in reference to prophetic exposition parallel with u that which Newton’s ‘Principia’ has occupied in reference to science.”Albert Barnes, of America, in his valuable commentary on the Apocalypse, has reproduced the views of Elliott, with illustrations drawn from the writings of the historians, Gibbon and Alison. While differing from Cun-ninghame, Faber, Frere, and Birks, on certain secondary details, Elliott is at one with them in considering that the French Revolution is the opening of the seventh trumpet era of the Apocalypse, and that we are living now in the period of the outpouring of the -seven vials destined to destroy the Papal and Mohammedan powers.

III. Interpretation of the Seven Vials.

The Apocalyptic vision which introduces the outpouring of the seven vials is full of glory and sublimity. A sea of glass mingled with fire is beheld, and standing upon it those who have “gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name,””having the harps of God,”singing ” the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty ; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints; who shall not fear Thee O Lord, and glorify Thy name, for Thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship, before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest.”Seven angels then issue from the temple “having the seven last plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles; and one of the four living creatures gives to the seven angels seven golden vials, full of the wrath of God, who liveth forever and ever.”And the temple is filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from His power; and no man is “able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels”are “fulfilled.”‘

The outpouring of the seven vials, on Babylon and the beast, brings about the climax of the Apocalyptic Drama.

Their imagery is drawn from the plagues inflicted upon Egypt and the judgments poured forth on Babylon by the Euphrates. The sevenfold order of the vials as falling under the seventh trumpet is typified by the events at the fall of Jericho, when during seven successive days the city was compassed about by the warriors of Israel, led in their march around the city by seven priests blowing ” seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the Lord,””and on the seventh day compassing the city after the same manner seven times.”At the seventh time Joshua directed the people to shout,—” shout for the Lord hath given you the city “; on the rising of which great shout the wall of Jericho “fell down flat,”and Israel entering in ” utterly destroyed all that was in the city,”and “burnt the city with fire.”And with this fall of Jericho which introduced and in principle comprehended the victories of Joshua over the Canaanites, did Israel enter into their Canaan inheritance and rest.

And now we hear “a great Voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.”

Then in succession on the earth, on the sea, on the rivers, and on the sun, the vial judgments are poured forth; and thus on the totality or entire realm of the antichristian world power.

The earth is smitten with a plague falling on the worshippers of “the beast”; the sea and the rivers become blood; the sun scorches with destructive fire.

Thus did the four first trumpet judgments fall on the earth, the sea, the rivers, and the celestial luminaries. But mark the difference. For whereas the judgment of the first trumpet was that of a storm of hail and fire, that of the first vial was a grievous sore, like the sixth plague of Egypt, “the boil breaking forth with blains upon man and beast”(Ex. 9: 10), and that, too, inflicted by “ashes of the furnace,”” sprinkled up towards heaven.”So were ashes of the “smoking furnace “seen by Abraham in his dread vision of the Egyptian bondage of his seed. “Sprinkled up towards heaven! “Like the cry of Abel’s blood rising, to the skies.

And then, whereas at the sounding of the second trumpet a mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, at the pouring out of the second vial the sea itself became a sea of blood.

And whereas, at the sounding of the third trumpet, the waters of the rivers were embittered,, and became like wormwood, at the pouring out of the third vial, the streams and fountains of water were, as of old in Egypt, changed to blood. The worshippers of the beast and persecutors of the saints and martyrs are given blood to drink, ” for they are worthy “(Rev. 16 : 6).

And whereas at the sounding of the fourth trumpet, the third part of the luminaries of heaven were darkened as by a dread eclipse, at the pouring out of the fourth vial, the sun blazes with scorching heat upon the inhabitants of the earth, so that men ” scorched with great heat blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues,”and “repent not to give Him glory.”

The fifth, sixth, and seventh vials are poured forth on the throne of the beast, on the River Euphrates, and into the air. Under the fifth vial the kingdom of the beast is filled with darkness, as in the ninth plague of Egypt. Under the sixth vial the waters of the Euphrates are dried up, as at the taking of ancient Babylon. Under the seventh vial great Babylon is destroyed, while the solemn final sentence sounds from heaven, “It is done.”

It should further be observed that while under the sixth trumpet the destroying army of Euphratean horsemen were loosed for their career of destruction, as a judgment on idolaters worshipping the work of their hands, “idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk; who under the dreadful infliction repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts ; “that under the pouring out of the sixth vial the waters of the Euphrates are dried up “that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.”

The seventh trumpet, like the seventh vial is final. As the third and last of three woe trumpets it contains the “seven last plagues”of the vials. Such are the resemblances, and such the differences, of the trumpets and vials.

INTERPRETATION OF THE SEVEN VIALS

And now, behold, the growth of light and understanding as to the meaning of these last judgments of the Apocalypse.

For as the light of approaching morn is first dim and faint, then waxes stronger, and becomes more evident, and then gaining intensity gilds the eastern clouds with touches of brightness, and sends up rays to the zenith, to herald the rising of the star of day, so has it been with the growth of light and understanding in relation to these sacred prophecies. Far back in past ages they shed a dim light upon the minds of men, who scarce comprehended more than the existence of some mysterious woes in reserve for the closing days of the Christian dispensation; but as the centuries rolled on the meaning of the strange predictions became localized in place and time; erroneous conceptions one after another were cast off, and at length a full persuasion of the character and sphere of these final judgments took possession of the minds of those who pondered the meaning of the oracles of God, and a solemn hush of expectation fell upon their spirits as they awaited the fulfilment of the things foretold. At last the hour arrived; the dreaded tempest broke; and as the vials of wrath were poured forth upon apostate Christendom, the saintly watchers, trembling at the things they beheld, recognized the fulfilment of the predicted woes, and were awakened to expect that great event to which these judgments are but the introduction, the return in glory and majesty of the King of Righteousness, and Prince of Peace, of whose kingdom there shall be no end.

EARLIER INTERPRETATIONS OF THE VIALS

For first, in the centuries preceding the Constantine Revolution the seven vials were thought to be plagues inflicted on some short- lived infidel antichrist who should rise up at the end of the world, as a Satanic apparition, and blazing for a few brief years, like a disastrous comet, should plunge again into darkness, and disappear from the astonished scene. Then in Mediaeval times some thought as did Joachim Abbas, that the seven vials were judgments which ran parallel with the seven seals, and seven trumpets, thus extending the period “of the vials to the entire interval between Christ’s departure and His return. When, later on, the Papal head was recognized as the predicted Man of Sin, and Papal Rome as the foretold Babylon, students of prophecy began to apply the vials to the long series of woes inflicted on the Papacy and Church of Rome, from those of the great schism towards the close of the middle ages, to those of the wars attending the Reformation, and the Puritan Revolution, in which the supremacy of Rome was over a large extent of Europe overthrown. But when the eighteenth century began it was seen by the most intelligent students of prophecy that the period of the seven vials was still future; and some were able to fix the very time of their fulfilment with correctness; while others anticipated with wonderful insight the nature of the judgments the vials were destined to bring. At length the fulfilment came, and came at the hour which had been indicated in the prophetic times. Then, one after another, as the vials of wrath were poured forth, they were seen to accomplish the prophecies of God’s Holy Word; and men bowed their heads, and worshipped Him who liveth forever and ever, whose word is true from the beginning, and standeth fast for evermore. The fabric of heaven and earth may be dissolved, and pass away like the vision of a night, but His word shall not pass away, but be fulfilled in its season ; not one thing failing of all that had been foretold.

For in the first place it was recognized from the beginning that the Babylon of chapters 17 and 18, is none other than Rome; and thus the sphere of the vials was localized. Victorinus in the third century, says of Rev. 17:9, “The seven heads are the seven hills on which the woman sitteth, that is, the city of Rome.”

So Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, and all the early fathers. The vision in the nineteenth chapter which closes the vial series Victorinus says represents “our Lord coming to His kingdom with the heavenly army.”The contemporaneous judgment of the winepress he says represents “the nations that should perish on the advent of the Lord.”But further light on the symbolism of the seven vials he lacks. Prlmasius, Bishop of the Carthaginian province in 553, says that the fall of Babylon under the vials is that of Rome. Bede, in the seventh century, recalls the fact that God declares repeatedly in Leviticus “and I will smite you with seven plagues.””And these,”he adds, “are to be the last when the Church shall have come forth from the midst of it”thus connecting the outpouring of the vials with a previous exodus of the Church from the scene of judgment, according to the words, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her plagues.”Such an exodus was the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury, and such in a different way was the exodus forced on the Huguenots of France before the fall of those woes which covered the country which banished them with bloodshed.

Ansbert in 770 interprets the first vial as symbolizing the plague of infidelity; a remarkable anticipation of the truth.

The Albigenses and Waldenses, the Wycliffites and Hussites all applied the judgments on Babylon under the vials to Papal Rome. The Reformers did the same, and interpreted the seven vials of a series of judgments inflicted chiefly on Rome. Thus Bullinger in 1573 applies the third vial to Popes and Papal princes, “stirring up bloody wars in which themselves were slain.”Foxe in 1587 thought the first five vials were poured on ancient Rome, and the sixth and seventh on Papal Rome.

Brightman in 1615 considered that the vials had been poured out, the first in the later Reformation days, in the time of Queen Elizabeth; the second in the time of the Council of Trent; the third he connected with the Jesuits; the fourth with the contentions arising from the light shinning from the newly opened scriptures ; the fifth on Rome, the throne of the beast; the sixth had past reference to the Turks from the Euphrates; the seventh completed the overthrow of Papal and Mohammedan power.

Pareus in 1615 thought the first vial represented “the ulcerous sores which fell on the Papists from Luther’s Reformation; the second and third deadly decrees of the Council of Trent; and judgments on Papal bishops and doctors for shedding saints’ blood; the fourth, fresh heat and light from the Scriptures enraging the Papists; the fifth, the darkening of Rome; the sixth, the drying up the resources of the anti-typical Babylon; the seventh, atmospheric pestilence, followed by universal destruction.

Mede in 1643 held that the vials related to the destruction of Antichrist; the first at the time of the secession of the Waldenses, Wycliffites, and Hussites; the second at Luther’s secession; the third at the secession and protest in the time of Elizabeth; the rest of the vials he thought future; of these the fourth might fall on “the German emperor as the chief luminary of the Papal system,”the fifth on Rome; the sixth on the Turkish Empire; the seventh on Satan’s kingdom as the prince of the power of the air. Here we recognize an advance in interpretation. Jurieau in 1685 maintained that the vials were the “steps by which the Babylonian or Papal Empire comes to its ruin.”The first vial he thought was poured out in the tenth century; the second and third in the earlier and later crusades; the fourth Papal despotism in the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries; the fifth the woes on the Papacy leading to the transference of the Papal seat from Rome to Avignon; the sixth the overthrow of Constantinople by the Turks; and the seventh the earthquake of the Reformation; so blind was this great man to the judgments which were yet to fall on the Papal and Mohammedan powers. But now came a notable advance in the interpretation; Launeus, living at the same time with Jurieu noted the fact his predecessors had overlooked, that the seven vials were the “seven last plagues,”and that the seventh, trumpet was the last, or finishing woe. The vials, therefore, belonged to a future period. The banished Huguenot minister to whom we have referred who wrote a book entitled “A New System of the Apocalypse,””finished but two days before the dragoons plundered him of all except this treatise,”followed Launeus in his interpretation, and opposed the views of Jurieu as to the past fulfilment of the vials.

“Seeling,”he says, “the vials contain judgments yet to come, I design not to speak otherwise of them than by way of conjecture.” The first vial may then represent the rage and miseries of prelates and priests at the diminution of their revenues, their blind zeal and superstition. The sea of the second vial is “the Papal kingdom.” Under the third vial the members of the Church of Rome who had shed the blood of Protestants shall turn their arms against themselves “and tear one another. And by that means like shall be returned unto them for like.”The fourth vial will probably be poured on the Ottoman Emperor, as the sun of the Eastern Empire. The fifth on the city of Rome; the sixth on the Turkish Empire preparing the way for the conversion of the Jews; the seventh a final and universal judgment on antichristian power. How truly remarkable are some of these anticipations. Sir Isaac Newton, living at the same time, laid stress in his work on the Apocalypse on the predicted sealing up of the meaning of these prophecies, till the time of the end. This period he thought that of the seventh trumpet, at whose sounding “the mystery of God should be finished.”That “main revolution”when all would be explained was “near at hand.”

Whiston as we have seen tells us it was Newton’s persuasion ” that the antichristian, or persecuting power of the Popedom which had so long corrupted Christianity would be put a stop to and broken to pieces by the prevalence of infidelity for some time before primitive Christianity could be restored.”Whiston in 1706 strongly advocated the view that the seven vials were contained in the seventh trumpet, and were all future. Vitringa, whose learned work on the Apocalypse belongs to the same period, acknowledged the plausibility of the opinion of Launeus that the vials were the development of the seventh trumpet, but puts forth the view that the earlier vials were already fulfilled in Papal history. Fleming, whose book on the rise and fall of the Papacy was published in 1701 deeply studied the question of the vials, and thought the fourth vial was poured on the sun of the Papal kingdom, the “houses of Austria and Bourbon.”He regarded it as partly fulfilled, and to be more so afterwards. As France was made use of to vex and scorch the Austrian family “so might it be hereafter.”The present French king takes the sun for his emblem, and this for his motto, Nee pluribus impar (not equalled by many). As to the expiration of this vial, / do fear it will not be until the year 1794.. The reason of which conjecture is this, that I find the Pope got a new foundation of exaltation when Justinian upon his conquest of Italy, left it, in a great measure, to the Pope’s management, being willing to eclipse his own authority to advance that of this haughty prelate.”Reckoning the 1,260 years from Justinian, Fleming reaches 1794. He adds the notable conclusion that as the Pope received the title of Supreme Bishop in A . D. 606, 1,260 years from that date in prophetic or calendar measure (1,242 solar years) would expire in 1848, at which date the vial judgment of 1794 he thought would reach its terminus. A wonderful anticipation of the truth! “But yet we are not to imagine”he adds, “that this vial will totally destroy the Papacy (though it will exceedingly weaken if) for we find this still in being and alive when the next vial is poured out.”Whiston, in a later edition of his “Commentary on the Apocalypse,”published in 1744, expressed the view that the infidelity which was destined to overthrow the Papal Babylon had begun to reveal its presence. In this he was indisputably correct.

Bishop Newton in 1754 declared that the symbolism of the fourth vial might represent “a most tyrannical and exorbitant exercise of arbitrary power by those who may be called the sun in the firmament of the beast, pope, or emperor,”adding, “time must discover.”

Dr. Gill in 1776 said in regard to the question whether the vials had been poured out, “I am ready to think they are not, because they seem to me to refer to the seventh trumpet”He thought the first vial would be probably not physical, but moral in character. Under the second vial he anticipated a judgment on the maritime powers of Spain and Portugal; under the third woes on the Papal lands of Italy and Savoy; the fourth might be poured on the ruling house of Austria, or the Pope; the fifth would fall on Rome, the sixth on the Turkish power, the seventh would bring to an end the kingdom of Satan.

Two years before Gill’s Commentary was published, Louis XVI came to the throne of France, the monarch who lost his life in the French Revolution. How near was the interpreter to the events of which he wrote, while all unconscious of their close proximity.

Reckoning from the decree of Phocas, Gill considered that the Papal power would fall in 1866. In 1866-70 came the crisis of its termination as a Temporal Government; but what great events had to precede that momentous close of an apostate dominion which had lasted for more than a thousand years.

Thirteen years later than the publication of Gill’s Commentary, on the I4th of July, 1789, began the French Revolution with the destruction of the Bastille, and four years later, in 1793, came the Reign of Terror. In August, 1792,40,000 priests were exiled. In September took place the massacre in Paris. On the aoth of January, 1793, Louis XVI was condemned to death, on the 21st he was executed. In March followed the war in La Vendee; on the 23d of June the proscription of the Girondists. On the i6th of October the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette. On the loth of November the worship of the goddess of Reason in Notre Dame; on the 24th the adoption of the New Republican Calendar. In 1794 Robespierre was president. On the 28th of July he and seventy-one others were guillotined. Bonaparte’s campaign followed; then his dictatorship as first consul; and then his coronation as emperor. In the twenty years of his wars most of the kingdoms of Europe were overthrown ; mil- lions perished by the sword; the Papacy was stripped of its revenues and temporal dominion, and the Pope carried into captivity. In the brief space of a quarter of a century the whole face of Europe was changed by a Revolution, which for crime, bloodshed, and world-wide effects, was without a parallel in human history.

To the students of prophecy it was now no longer a question what the vials signified. They beheld them poured forth. And with what terrific rapidity and dire effects!

In the infidelity and corruption in France which preceded and led to the Revolution they beheld the first vial fulfilled; in the unexampled bloodshed of the Revolution they saw accomplished the second and third vials; in the dreadful wars of Napoleon the fourth vial; in the deposition and captivity of the Pope, and spoliation of Rome, the fifth vial; in the decline and wasting away of Turkish power the sixth vial; and in the consummation of Babylon’s destruction which they still await, the seventh and concluding vial.

THE FIRST VIAL

It had long been acknowledged that the grievous sore of the first vial must represent either a physical or a moral plague, and the probability admitted that it represented the latter; especially as considered in the light of that passage in Isaiah i, in which the hateful moral condition of apostate Israel is described under the same figure, —”from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores.”And what for a century had been the moral state of France but this? A plague rendered more acute and deadly by the venom of infidelity which had taken possession of the entire nation, loosening every moral tie, and preparing the totally apostate people to dethrone God Himself, if it had been possible, substituting the worship of a licentious harlot, as the goddess of Reason, for the worship of the living and true God.

The thing foretold had come to pass. The moral monstrosity was an accomplished fact. On the worshippers of the Papal Power were plainly seen the hateful plague blotches. They were marked men, like the plague-smitten Egyptians in the days of old; men to be shunned with aversion and horror.

Writing in 1813 Cunninghame says that atheism and anarchy were chief blotches in the dreadful plague. “On the Continent these dreadful principles have had their full sway, and in the devoted country of France and its immediate dependencies they have at length produced a degree of moral turpitude, perhaps unequalled hitherto in the history of our species.”

Faber saw in the delusive spirit of atheism which had sway in the Revolution the darkest form of Antichristian apostasy; that of the open and blasphemous denial of the Father, and of the Son,

Elliott, taking a more comprehensive view of the actual facts sees the fulfilment of the Apocalyptic symbol in “that tremendous outbreak of social and moral evil, of democratic fury, atheism, and vice, which characterized the French Revolution; that of which the ultimate source was in the long and deep-seated corruption and irreligion of the nation; its outward vent, expression and organ in the Jacobin Clubs, and their seditious and atheistic publications; • its result, the dissolution of all society, all morals and all religion, with acts of atrocity and horror accompanying scarce paralleled in the history of man; and suffering and i anguish of correspondent intensity throbbing throughout the whole social mass, and corroding it:—that which from France, as a centre, spread like a plague, through its affiliated societies, to the other countries of Papal Christendom, and proved, wherever its poison was imbibed, to be as much the punishment as the symptom of the corruption within.”

The commencement of this moral plague in France was certainly earlier than 1792, the date at which Bichino, Faber, Cunninghame and Frere had thought the seventh trumpet sounded, and the vial judgments began.

Faber points out that on the 26th of August, 1792, the denial of God in France “was for the first time formally established by law.”Let it be granted that this was a crisis in the plague, but let it be also admitted that the plague in question was raging in 1755 when Rousseau published his “Discours sur 1’origine et les Fondements de PInegalite parmi les hommes,”and Diderot and D’Alem-bert were issuing their infidel “Encyclopaedie.”

Of Voltaire Vinet says “a partir de 1’an A . D ., 1750, il fut encore le plus populaire et le plus puissant des ecrivains 1’an 1750, ou plutot 1746, marque le point essentiel dans la carriere et dans la direction du siecle.””De 1’an 1750 a 1’an 1780, epoque ou la publication complete de 1’ouvrage de Raynal, est comme le dernier eclat d’une incendie, a qui rien ne reste a devorer.”

Ascending still earlier in the century we recall the facts that in 1727 the Church of the United Brethren was established by Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut; that in 1731 – Whitfield and Wesley commenced their evangelistic labours so marvellously blessed on both sides of the Atlantic: and that in 1740-44, the Glorious Revival took place at Northampton in New England, in connection with the labours of Jonathan Edwards, who thought the work of God which he witnessed, and has so fully described, was the dawn of the Millennial Day. May we not hear in the voices which sounded forth in this great and remarkable awakening, alike in Germany, in England, and in America, the seventh trumpet of the Kingdom of Christ, already commencing to peal forth its glad note of jubilee?

For surely that trumpet is primarily the trumpet of the kingdom and only in a secondary sense the trumpet of woes and judgments sent to prepare the way for the establishment of the Kingdom. Viewed in this light, may not the going forth of the angel of the everlasting gospel just before the fall of Babylon (Rev. 14 : 6, 8), coincide with the sounding of the seventh trumpet of Jubilee?

Sir Isaac Newton said most correctly, “An angel must fly through the midst of heaven with the everlasting gospel to preach to all nations before Babylon falls, and the Son of Man reaps His harvest.”

Did not this flight of the angel of the Everlasting Gospel begin in the Great Revival in the time of Zinzendorf, Wesley, Whitfield, and Jonathan Edwards? Are not modern missions in all their world-wide range the evolution of the Revival which then began?

If this be so, how cheering the view presented of the mode in which the seventh trumpet era was inaugurated. It broke upon the world, not as the mere messenger of woes and judgments, but as the herald of mercies prepared for all mankind. Its trumpet note was primarily one of triumphant joy; its thrilling proclamation liberty for the captives, and salvation for the lost.

THE SECOND VIAL

And now returning to the vials we recall the fact that ihe first vial has been poured out on Papal France, where (Itr worshippers of the beast are covered with its predicted “noisome and grievous sores”; and that the plague has been recognized by the interpreters of the prophetic word.

They note the universal massacres and dreadful wars which followed. “France,”says Cunninghame, “became drenched in its own blood, and the whole territory converted into a vast slaughter- house. It has been computed that two millions of men perished in that devoted country within three years after it became a Republic.

“Long after the Revolutionary massacres had ceased, French blood still continued to flow in torrents, and from the accession of Napoleon to the Consular and Imperial powers, till his overthrow by the combined forces of Europe, it successively fertilized the soil of every country from the banks of the Tagus to the deserts of Poland and European Russia in the series of dreadful wars carried on to glut the ambition of a ferocious usurper. In particular during the late awful campaigns in Russia, Germany and France, this and the following vial have received a fearful accomplishment in a destruction of the human race without example in the annals of modern times.”

The “sea “on which the second vial is poured out turning it to blood, is understood by Cunninghame to represent primarily the French nation. Elliott and other interpreters consider that the sphere of this judgment was in a special sense a maritime one ; that its effects fell on “the maritime power, and commerce, and colonies of Papal Christendom.”

The democratic revolutionary spirit of France and the naval force of England contributed to effect the purpose of Divine Providence. First, the Isle of Hayti or St. Domingo, the most flourishing of the French colonies, being infected by the like infidel principles, was lost after a servile war of twelve years, in which 60,000 blacks were slaughtered.

Then, for twenty years, the fleet of England (preserved and directed by the same good providence of God) wasted in all directions the ships, commerce, and maritime colonies of France, and of her allies, Holland and Spain. Their Beet was destroyed in 1793, at Toulon, by Lord Hood; by whom also Corsica, and nearly all the Spanish and West Indian Islands were taken in 1794. In 1795 followed the naval victory of L’Orient, and the capture of the Cape of Good Hope.

The victory in 1797 off Cape St. Vincent was quickly succeeded by that of Camperdown over the Dutch fleet.

Then followed Lord Nelson’s three mighty victories of the Nile in 1798, of Copenhagen in 1801, and in 1805 of Trafalgar.

Viewing the losses suffered by France from 1793 to the end of 1815, we find that nearly 600 vessels of war, besides numerous ships of commerce, were destroyed, together with a large proportion of their officers and men.

The world’s history does not furnish such a period of naval war and bloodshed. “The sea became as the blood of a dead man.” Finally, when the maritime power of the papal nations had been swept away by English victories, the Spanish colonies of South America threw off their allegiance, after another scene of carnage, only paralleled by those before described; the Brazils also were separated from Portugal, and so the prediction was complete : as regarded the papal European colonies, they became “dead.”

Doubtless the judgments on many of these colonies might be considered as being retributive for the cruelties practiced in their exercise of the slave trade.

THE THIRD VIAL

Slaughters in papal lands watered by the Alpine fountains and streams, and by the boundary rivers, the Rhine and Upper Danube, followed. It seems natural to apply the third vial to this dreadful retributive judgment.

Albert Barnes notices that four points as to this vial are clear: (1) “That it would succeed the first mentioned, and apparently, at a period not remote. (2) That it would occur in a region where there had been persecution. (3) It would be in a country of streams, and rivers, and fountains. (4) It would be a just retribution for the bloody persecutions which had occurred there.”

In this interpretation of it he follows Elliott, who says, “During the year 1792 war was declared by France against Germany, and the next year against Sardinia; consequently all those towns watered by the Rhine and Alpine streams became scenes of carnage. Metz, Worms, Spires; the towns formerly desolated by Attila, suffered. Another French army entered upon the countries situated on the Meuse, a branch of the Rhine; a third advanced into Piedmont, the Alpine frontier. In 1793 and 1794 war still raged in the same quarters. The French advanced to Holland. In many places the success fluctuated, but in most instances they were victorious. At last Charles of Austria drove their generals, Moreau and Jourdan, and theif armies back to the Rhine.

In A. D. 1797 Bonaparte attacked the Sardinians and Aus-trians. The course he tracked was from the Alpine rivers through Northern Italy, till he reached Venice. Every river was a scene of carnage, and he crossed seven in succession. The Alpine rivers were turned to ” blood.”

It was in 1797 that Bonaparte uttered the remarkable threat, “I will prove an Attila to Venice.”

Before peace could be restored Austria was forced to submit; and the treaty of Campio Formio stipulated that the valley of the Rhine, one part of the prophetic scene, together with the Austrian Netherlands and Palatinate on one side of the Rhine, and Wurtemberg, Bavaria, Baden and Westphalia on the other, should all be made over to France.

Again in 1799 the “fountains of waters”were dyed with blood, the French having suffered reverse and been driven out of all the places they occupied in North Italy ‘ with much bloodshed.

The war soon recommenced. In 1800 that terrible and decisive battle of Marengo was fought, and the Danube became the scene of judgment. One victory after another succeeded, till the memorable battle of Austerlitz completed the overthrow of the Austrian power.

The reason ( given by the angel for the judgment is remarkable —”They are worthy, for they have shed the blood’ of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink.”

Was it not so that the cruelties—of the French and Piedmontese, and the rulers of Savoy, against the Waldenses and Albigenses, the Huguenots and Calvinists, from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and of Austria against the Hussites, the Waldenses and Lutherans in Lombardy, Moravia, and the Netherlands already related -did call out for retributive justice? “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth.”

THE FOURTH VIAL

“In regard to the application of this vial,”Barnes the Commentator, who follows Elliott, says, “the following things may be remarked: (a) That the calamity here referred to was one of the series of events which would precede the overthrow of the ‘beast,’ and contribute to that—for to this all these judgments tend. (b) In the order in which it stands, it is to follow, and apparently to follow soon, the third judgment—the pouring of the vial upon the fountains and streams, (c) It would be a calamity such as if the sun, the source of light and comfort to mankind, were smitten, and became a source of torment. (d) This would be attended by a great destruction of men, and we should naturally look in such an application for calamities in which multitudes of men would be, as it were, consumed, (e) This would not be followed, as it might be hoped it would, by repentance, but would be attended with reproaches of God, with profaneness, with a great increase of wickedness.

Now, on the supposition that the explanation of the previous passages is correct, there can be no great difficulty in supposing that this refers to the wars of Europe following the French Revolution; the wars that preceded the direct attack on the papacy, and the overthrow of the papal government. For these events had all the characteristics here referred to. (a) They were one of a series in weakening the papal power in Europe—heavy blows that will yet be seen to have been among the means preliminary to its final overthrow. (b) They followed in their order the invasion of Northern Italy—for one of the purposes in that invasion was to attack the Austrian power there, and ultimately through the Tyrol to attack Austria itself. Napoleon, after his victories in Northern Italy, above referred to, (comp. chapter xx of Alison’s ‘History of Europe’), thus writes to the French Directory: ‘Coni, Ceva’, and Alexandria are in the hands of our army; if you do not ratify the convention, I will keep their fortresses and march upon Turin. Meanwhile, I shall march to- morrow against Beaulieu, and drive him across the Po; I shall follow close at his heels, overawe Lombardy, and in a month be in the Tyrol, join the army of the Rhine and carry our united forces into Bavaria. The design is worthy of you, of the army, and of the destinies of France. 1 (c) The campaign in Germany in 1796 followed immediately this campaign in Italy. Thus, in chapter XX of Alison’s History, we have an account of the campaign in Italy; in chapter xxi we have the account of the campaign in Germany; and the other wars in Europe that continued so long, and that were so fierce and bloody, followed in quick succession—all tending, in their ultimate results, to weaken the papal power, and to secure its final overthrow, (d) It is hardly necessary to say here that these wars had all the characteristics here supposed. It was as if the sun were smitten in the heavens, and power were given to scorch men with fire. Europe seemed to be on fire with musketry and artillery, and presented almost the appearance of the broad blaze of a battlefield. The number that perished was immense. These wars were attended with the usual consequences—blasphemy, profaneness, and reproaches of God in every form. And yet there was another effect wholly in accordance with the statement here, that none of these judgments brought men to ‘ repentance, that they might give God the glory.’ Perhaps these remarks, which might be extended to great length, will show that, on the supposition that it was intended to refer to those scenes by the outpouring of this vial, the symbol was well-chosen and appropriate.”

Elliott says the “scorching with fire “we may refer to the sufferings of the countries which were exposed to these fearful troubles. The accounts which we have received enable us to appreciate the point and truth of Napoleon’s own observation,—”The genius of conquest can only be regarded as the genius of destruction.”Conscriptions, taxation, loss of life, pillage of property, devastation, and ruin,, marked his course, and sullied the glory of his exploits. Men were “scorched with great heat.”

THE FIFTH VIAL

The fifth vial is poured out on “the seat of the beast.””We have already seen,”says Elliott, “how in the Revolution the Romish clergy suffered. Their means of support was withdrawn by the abolition of tithes, the confiscation of the Church lands, and the destruction of monastic houses. This was followed by the national abolition of the Romish religion, and the razing the churches to the ground. So was the whole French ecclesiastical establishment broken up. Twenty-four thousand of the clergy were massacred with horrid atrocities; the terrified remnant fled.

“So much had the anti-papal spirit increased, that the French army urged their march against Rome itself, and the Pope only saved himself by the surrender of several towns, and the payment of a large sum of money, and the best treasures of the Vatican.

“At length the decree went forth for the humbling of the beast himself. In 1809 Napoleon declared the Pope’s temporal dominion at an end. The estates of the Church were annexed to France; and Rome was degraded to be the second city of the French Empire. Surely on ‘ the seat of the beast’ the vial of wrath had been poured out.

“Subsequently the Pope was brought prisoner to France, and there, as a pensioner, he received a stated salary. True he afterwards gained back the privilege of fixing his seat at Rome. But the world had seen his weakness, and a precedent was established for the benefit of future generations.

“In France the Romish religion continued only to be tolerated on an equality with other religions; in Portugal and Spain church property has been lately confiscated; and in Italy still later events have shown that the papal authority, if unsupported by temporal power, has not any longer in itself that which can maintain its supremacy.”

THE SIXTH VIAL

The drying up of the Euphrates flood under the sixth vial had long been understood to refer to the wasting away of the Turkish or Mohammedan power, which according to prophecy, was to follow the judgments of the French Revolution.

The Turks who had overthrown the corrupt Eastern Empire of Rome had come into Europe “from the upper stream of the River Euphrates. All over Southeastern Europe the flood had extended as far as Venice. It had been a fearful ‘woe’ on Eastern Christendom. In 1820 a formidable insurrection against the Turkish power began in Greece, which quickly spread to Wallachia, Moldavia, and the Aegean isles.

“In 1826 Turkey was obliged to surrender to Russia all its fortresses in Asia, and frightful civil commotions distracted Constantinople, ending in the slaughter of the Janissaries, when 4,000 veteran but mutinous and unmanageable soldiers were shot or burned to death by order of the Sultan himself in their own barracks in the city, and many thousands more all over the country. The empire had for centuries groaned under their tyranny, and Mahmoud II was resolved to organize a fresh army on the military system of western Europe, and saw no other way of delivering himself from the tyrannical Jannissaries than this awful massacre, which, while it liberated Turkey from an intolerable incubus, at the same time, materially weakened her strength. Before a fresh army had been matured, Russia again attacked the Turkish Empire, and backed up by England and France, secured the independence of Greece, after the great naval battle of Navarino, in which the Ottoman fleet was totally destroyed. In 1828 and 1829 Russia again invaded Turkey; her armies crossed the Balkans, and penetrated as far as Adrianople where a treaty, more disastrous to the Porte than any previous one, was concluded. The freedom of Servia was secured, and no Turk was permitted to reside in future north of the Danube, while Russia obtained one of the mouths of that river, and territory to the south of it. The large Turkish province of Algeria in North Africa was lost to the Sublime Porte, and became a French colony in the following year.

“In 1832 Turkey was brought to the verge of dissolution in consequence of the successful rebellion of the powerful pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali. He attacked and conquered Syria, and defeated the Turkish armies in three great battles, and he would have taken Constantinople had not the western nations intervened. A second rebellion on the part of Egypt took place in 1840, when Ibrahim Pasha defeated the Turks at Nezib. The Turkish fleet was betrayed into the power of Mehemet Ali, and taken to Alexandria; and Europe was obliged again to interfere to protect the Sultan from the rebellion of his vassal, who could at that time have easily overthrown the Turkish empire. In the following year the British Admiral took Siaon, Beyrout, and St. Jean d’Acre; and, in order to restore the Turkish rule, which had been completely lost, drove Mehemet Ali out of Syria. Egypt has been, however, virtually independent ever since, and her present rulers bear the title of Khedive, or king, in recognition of the fact. They are now far more under the power of England than under that of Turkey.

“In 1844 the Porte was compelled by the Christian nations of Europe to issue an edict of religious toleration, abolishing forever its characteristic and sanguinary practice of execution for apostasy, that is, for the adoption of the Christian faith. As this was entirely against its will, because against the precepts of the Koran, and contrary to the practice of all the ages during which Mohammedanism had been in existence, it was a most patent proof that Ottoman independence was gone, as a matter of fact, though often mentioned still as a plausible fiction of diplomacy, and that henceforth it had to shape its conduct in accordance with the views of its neighbours, the Christian nations of Europe. It was a compulsory sheathing of the sword of persecution, which had been relentlessly wielded for over twelve centuries, a most marked era in the overthrow of Mohammedan power.”

THE SEVENTH VIAL

This is the greatest of the vials, and the last. On its outpouring is heard “a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.”As this is the vial of the destruction of “Babylon the great,”the detailed descriptions of that event in Rev. 17, 18, and 19 belong to it, and will be fulfilled in its course. The scope of the seventh vial in apocalyptic prophecy is greater than that of all the preceding vials. To it belongs the solemn and sublime description of the issuing forth from the opened heaven of the rider on the white horse, in chapter 19, to “judge and to make war,”whose eyes are as a flame of fire; on whose head are many crowns; whose garment is a vesture dipped in blood; whose name is “Faithful and True,”the “Word of God,”the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”; whose followers are “the armies in heaven,”seated upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean; from whose mouth goes a sharp sword that with it he should smite the nations; who shall rule the nations with a rod of iron ; and who “treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

This is He who, in the language of Old Testament prophecy, “comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength, mighty to save “; concerning whom the question is asked, “Wherefore are Thou red in Thine apparel, and Thy garments like him that treadeth the winefat?” and who Himself replies, “I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with Me; for I will “tread them in Mine anger, and trample them in My fury ; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain all My raiment. For the day of vengeance is in Mine heart, and the year of My redeemed is come! ”

And as the final treading of “the great winepress of the wrath of God “is described at the close of the parenthetical visions in Rev. 14, that judgment also belongs to those of the seventh vial, in which according to Rev. 19, “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God”is trodden. If the winepress is not trodden twice over, both passages must refer to the same event. And hence the destruction of “the vine of the earth,”or Harvest of the Vintage in chapter 14 takes place under the seventh vial. Its prediction is as follows,—”And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. A.nd another angel came out from the altar, which had power over -fire, and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”

And further, to the judgment of the seventh vial belongs the Armageddon conflict and its issues of the nineteenth of Revelation, under which “the beast “and “the kings of the earth, and their armies,”are “gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army “; when “the beast is taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him,”and both are “cast alive “into the lake of fire. This final destruction of the anti- Christian hosts is that of “the supper of the great God,”to which “all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven “are called to come, that they “may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, small and great.”

The events of the seventh vial as described in Rev. 16, are as follows,—

1. The preliminary warning, “Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.”

2. The gathering together of the anti-Christian hosts “into a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon.”

3. The pouring out of the seventh vial into the air; not as previous vials on “the earth,”on “the sea,”on “the rivers and fountains of waters,”and on “the sun,”all of which spheres are local and restricted; but “into the air,”a universal judgment on the sphere of Satan’s government, as “the prince of the power of the air “(Eph. 2 : 2).

4. The great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne saying, “It is done”a terminal sentence analogous to the “It is finished”of Calvary, and “It is done “of the New Creation in chapter 21 : 6.

5. The voices, and thunders, and lightnings.

6. The “great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.”

7. The tripartite division of the great city Babylon; “the great city was divided into three parts “; the “great city “of chapter 11, ” which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified “; the city whose “tenth part “had fallen by the “great earthquake “which followed the death, resurrection, and ascension of the witnesses; the “great city Babylon “of the judgment described in chapter 18, at the smoke of whose burning ascends the cry “What city is like unto this great city ? “”That great city that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls;””that mighty city”whose merchandise of all preciotfs” things includes “the bodies and souls of men “; which’as “a great millstone cast into the sea “shall be “thrown down,”and “found no more at all “; the city by whose “sorceries were all nations deceived “; and in which “was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”

8. The fall of “the cities of the nations.”

9. The coming of “great Babylon””in remembrance before God to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.”

10. The convulsion in which “every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.”

11. The great hailstorm falling on men out of heaven, “every stone about the weight of a talent “; men blaspheming “because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof was exceeding great.”

Continue to part III