thought, and the power of manifesting it to others in many modes, remain unimpaired. An obstruction therefore of the organs of speech, or the power of utterance, were a proper symbol of a compulsory silence, not death, which is a termination of all activity and sense, a release of the spirit from the dominion of men, and transference to another scene of existence.

Nor is it any objection that in this exposition death is interpreted as literal, and not analogical; since if the death of the witnesses is to be literal, it is not in violation of analogy, but to avoid its violation, that it is represented by a literal death. There is no condition of life, there is no variation of existence here, that is adapted to symbolize that change. To have employed any other change or condition to symbolize it, would have been to misrepresent it by the suggestion or assumption of resemblances that do not exist. To avoid a false symbolization therefore, it was, as in other instances of similar agents, indispensable that it should be made the representative of itself.

The city, is the great city Babylon, the associated teachers. and rulers of the nationalized churches, which in expression of its character as paying to creatures and images a homage that is due only to God, is called Sodom and Egypt, apostate, intolerant of his people, and idolatrous.

The place where Christ was crucified, was an open elevated space without the walls of Jerusalem, and on one of the principal entrances to the city. The street where the dead body of the witnesses is to be placed, represents parts therefore of the ten kingdoms, bearing a relation of conspicuity and importance to the apostate hierarchies, like that which the great entrance to Jerusalem that passed along by the foot of Calvary bore to that city;-parts of those kingdoms from which those hierarchies. largely derive their sustenance, wealth, and worshippers.

The people and nations who gaze on their bodies, are the subJects of the wild beast who approve of their slaughter. The trial to which the witnesses put those who dwell on the earth, is the trial of their principles and conduct by the word of God, the refutation of their false doctrines, the rebuke of their idolatries, and forewarning of the judgments by which they are to be overwhelmed. The refusal to allow their burial, implies that there are to be persons who will desire to perform for them that office, and yields additional proof that their death is to be literal. It is not easy to conceive what disposition that would be of witnesses merely compelled to be silent, which should be to them, what

burial is to a dead body. Would it be banishment to a distant scene? But what were that but to restore them to freedom and activity?

The exultation over them, and mutual congratulations of those who dwell on the earth, imply that they are to deem them and their adherents as forever silenced, and regard themselves as freed from the annoyances of a refutation of their principles, and a denunciation of their usurpations with which the witnesses had before tried them.

In this slaughter all the witnesses are to fall. As the two symbol witnesses represent all who are to fulfil their office, and as the symbol war was made on both of them, and they were both slain, their death must be regarded as symbolizing the death of all whom they represent. They are accordingly spoken of throughout as a class. There is no indication that any are to escape. They are all exhibited as dead, and denied a burial; and all as raised, and called to the cloud in heaven; and the exultation of their enemies at their slaughter and exposure to the public gaze, indicates that they are to be regarded as totally destroyed; and as they are the same as the hundred and forty-four thousand sealed of all the tribes of Israel, it indicates that the persecution is to extend to all the denominations of the church that contain true believers, and to be common therefore to all the ten kingdoms. It implies also that the persecuting powers are to act in concert, and agree beforehand in respect to the time of the slaughter, and the preservation and exposure of the dead bodies. What a tremendous crisis that is to be, when all evangelical teachers and confessors who faithfully maintain allegiance to God and refuse submission to the usurping powers of the state, are thus to be exterminated, and not an individual left openly to resist the wild beast and false prophet, and vindicate the rights of God! What an exasperation of those antichristian powers it bespeaks! What a determination to test the truth of this prophecy! And what an impious defiance of the Almighty! Their aim in the preservation and exposure of the bodies of the witnesses, is doubtless to be, like that of the Jewish priests in setting a watch at the sepulchre of Christ, to guard against a false pretence of their resurrection. They may think by placing them where the multitude may daily gaze at them, to render the expectation of their resurrection ridiculous; and to make the spectacle the more effective, may prevent them from dissolution by the methods discovered by modern chemists by which they may be preserved, not only so unaltered as to be identified, but as to

exhibit the peculiar expression and glow of the recently slain.1 These measures most clearly indicate that this prophecy is to be understood at the period, and the expectation entertained and expressed by the witnesses, of a speedy resurrection.

The three days and a half, the period of the exposure of their bodies, and exultation of their enemies, like the twelve hundred and sixty days, are to be interpreted symbolically, as three and a half years.

Their resurrection is an additional proof that their death is to be literal. It is not to be the result of any efforts by themselves. That were to contradict the symbol. It is not to spring from any agency of their friends who would have buried them, nor from a political revolution. That were to contradict the symbol also. The political revolution, moreover, denoted by the earthquake, is to follow their resurrection, not to precede it. It is not to be a mere restoration to the liberty of speech. That would leave the symbol far more significant than that which it represents. Analogy also requires that like their death, it should be interpreted literally. A restoration from involuntary silence to freedom of speech, has no similitude to a restoration from decay to vitality, from insensibility to consciousness and activity. The one is a mere removal of restraint from powers already possessed, the other a gift of new powers themselves; the one a mere change of condition, the other a creation. Their only common characteristic is a change, but that, as the change of the one is wholly unlike

He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Ere the first day of death is fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,

The last of danger and distress,

Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,

And mark'd the mild, angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd yet tender traits that streak,

The languor of the pallid cheek,

And, but for that sad shrouded eye,

That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold obstruction's apathy

Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon

Yes, but for these, and these alone,
Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power,

So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,

The first, last look by death revealed.

GIAOUR.

that of the other, constitutes no resemblance, and presents no medium by which the one can be made the representative of the other. But instead of springing from natural causes, their resurrection is to be miraculous. A spirit of life from God is to enter into them, and they are to stand on their feet, and overwhelm those with fear who witness the spectacle.

The representation that they heard a great voice from heaven saying, Ascend here, implies either that it is to be heard by them alone, or to be so expressed as obviously to be addressed exclusively to them. If it is to be audible to the spectators and so expressed as to present no indication that it is exclusively directed. to the witnesses, their enemies can only learn by a process of reason, or the event, that it is not also addressed to them.

The cloud in which they are to ascend, is the cloud of the divine presence doubtless, from which the voice summoning them to heaven is to proceed. Their assumption to heaven is to be a wholly different event from their resurrection; is like that to be, not the result of their exertion or contrivance, nor the work of their friends, but of the Spirit of God; and is to be visible to their enemies and public. They are to ascend in the cloud, the chariot of the Almighty in which Elijah was rapt to heaven, and become thereby invisible to men. It is to be literal, therefore. There is no change of station here that answers to these symbols. As a visible descent from the atmosphere, as of an angel, denotes a sudden and conspicuous entrance on an important agency here, so a visible and public ascent to heaven, in a cloud, can denote nothing less than a visible and public departure from this scene to the invisible world. Nor is it a deviation from the requirements of analogy that the symbol is in this instance of the same species as that which it is employed to symbolize, inasmuch as no change of which men are here the subjects, is in any degree suited to represent so peculiar and august an event.

Their resurrection and assumption, therefore, are to be a public and stupendous testimony of God to their truth and fidelity, and refutation of the usurpations and calumnies of their persecutors; and are to be felt to be such; for as an instant consequence, there is to be a great earthquake, by which a tenth of the city is to be thrown down and seven thousand men of name killed. A great earthquake denotes a sudden and violent revolution of the opinions and feelings of a people in respect to their government, in which their rulers are dejected from their stations, and their ancient institutions overthrown; as a violent agitation of the ground changes the attitude of every thing on its surface, overturns the

structures of art, and spreads the scene with confusion and ruin. The tenth of the city, is the tenth of the hierarchies denoted by the great city. It is the hierarchy, therefore, of one of the ten kingdoms, and a nationalized hierarchy, obviously, as its fall is to be the consequence of a political revolution, and the revolution of a persecuting government that is symbolized by the wild beast. The fall of a hierarchy, as will be shown in the comment on the fourteenth chapter, is its fall from its station as a national establishment. The slaughter, by the earthquake, of seven thousand men of name, is the slaughter doubtless of all the men of chief station in that civil government. The resurrection and assumption of the witnesses then, is to strike the spectators with an irresistible conviction that they are true worshippers of God; that the civil rulers, therefore, who persecuted and slew them are his enemies, and guilty of an impious invasion of his rights in assuming authority over his laws and the faith and worship of their subjects. Under the impulse of that conviction, they are no longer to submit to such an usurped dominion over their duties and their consciences, but are to hurl from their stations those who had arrogated it, and strike from existence their obnoxious institutions and laws. And this change of convictions and feelings is to extend equally to the national hierarchy, the creature of that government, which sanctions its usurpation of the rights of God and slaughter of his witnesses. The falsehood of its pretences to exclusive authority is to become irresistibly manifest. Its principles, its spirit, and its agency, like those of its parent and associate, the wild beast, are to be seen to be those of antichrist, and it is instantly to sink in the judgment and feeling of all to the rank of an apostate; its dignitaries are to be slaughtered along with the tyrannical civil rulers; and so overwhelming are to be these demonstrations, and the terror they are to inspire, that their associates and followers who survive are to be overawed, and give glory to God by the confession of their errors, the justification of the witnesses, the acknowledgment of the exclusive right of the Almighty to appoint the faith and homage of his creatures, and the vindication of his ways in delivering his servants and overthrowing his enemies.

What an august verification will these events form of the promise to the witnesses that their words shall prove a devouring fire to their enemies; that God will grant them as conspicuous tokens of his approbation as he gave his ancient prophets, and make them to his foes, what Moses was to the Egyptians, and Elijah to the apostate Israelites !