of God, without falsehood and without spot. Therefore they are redeemed from the earth, a first offering to God and to the Lamb, and are thereafter to follow him wherever he goes, the attendants of his throne, and spectators of all his great acts in judging his foes, and redeeming his saints. They have the name of the Lamb and of his Father written on their foreheads, and are distinguished by that also from the worshippers of the image, and are the same as the hundred forty-four thousand sealed, whose numbers were heard by the apostle in the vision of the seventh chapter.

To have the name of God and of the Lamb written on the forehead, is to be brought to a public and decisive manifestation of allegiance to the Most High, and him alone, as of title to religious homage, and right to impose religious laws; and of faith. alone in Christ as Redeemer: in contradistinction from those who sanction the impious assumptions of civil rulers and apostate prophets, that claim dominion over the rights and laws of God; make themselves, and demons, and idols, objects of homage; and supersede the Redeemer by other mediators and other grounds of reliance. As the worshippers of the image of the wild beast impress on themselves its mark and number, by entering the society of that apostate hierarchy, submitting to its rites, offering its idolatrous worship, and obeying its sway; so the worshippers of God become impressed with his name and the name of the Lamb, by refusing to join that idolatrous train, and publicly asserting the sole right of God to institute the laws of religion and receive a religious homage, paying to him alone the worship he demands, and placing in Christ exclusively the trust he requires as Redeemer.

In the vision of the sealing in the seventh chapter, the agents by whom this great movement is to be excited, are symbolized by the angel ascending from the sun-rising,―an emblem of a new day, or the commencement of a new era,-bearing the seal of God; and the result of their agency on the servants of God, is denoted by the impress of the seal on their foreheads. In the second vision of that chapter, a great multitude of every nation, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, was exhibited to the apostle as standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palms, and uttering like these with a loud voice the song The salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb; and the Lamb is represented as thenceforth dwelling with them and leading them to the fountains of the waters of life. That spectacle, as was shown in its exposition, exhibits the

whole of the redeemed at the advent of Christ, raised from death, presented to the Father, adopted as sons and heirs, and assigned to the stations of kings and priests in the everlasting empire which is then to be established on the earth. This exhibits the sealed as first crowned with that salvation. They are a first-offering to God, and are the witnesses who in the eleventh chapter are represented as slain, and after three years and a half, raised from death and assumed to heaven, anterior to the seventh trumpet. The larger multitude are to be raised at the advent of Christ, subsequently to that trumpet.

Mr. Daubuz supposes the hundred forty-four thousand to represent the church in the time of Constantine; and their song to symbolize its celebration at that period of its deliverance from persecution, and its legal establishment. But that is disproved by many considerations. It assumes that the Mount Zion, on which the Lamb stood with the hundred forty-four thousand, was on earth, and thence implies that the Lamb was personally and visibly present with the church in its celebration of its adoption and nationalization by Constantine. As the Lamb symbolizes himself as truly as the hundred forty-four thousand symbolize those whom they represent, so his visibility in the vision as truly symbolizes his visibility in the scene which it foreshadows, as their visibility in it foreshows the visibility, in the symbolized scene, of those whom they represent. To reject this great law, is to deny to the visions all certainty of meaning. If a visible presence do not symbolize a visible presence, then an agent may not represent an agent, nor an agency an agency, and all possibility is at once extinguished of demonstrative interpretation. But no visible advent of Christ took place at the celebration by the church of its adoption by Constantine. The vision cannot represent that celebration therefore.

The character of the church under that monarch, was precisely the reverse of that ascribed to the hundred forty-four thousand. So far from having the name of God written on their foreheads, the Christians of that period as a body, paid a religious homage to Constantine and his associates, who were the first or dragon wild beast under its seventh head, by acquiescing in his usurpation of dominion over the rights of God, his erection of them into a civil community, his making his will the law of their duty to God, and enforcing obedience to it by the penalties of confiscation, imprisonment, exile, and death; an arrogation of the divine prerogatives the most stupendous of which creatures have ever been guilty, and on account of which that prince and his successors, though

nominally Christian, are exhibited by the Spirit of God under the symbol of the seventh head of the dragon. Yet, so far as appears, not a voice of objection was raised against it by any of the conspicuous bishops at that period. Those of the people of God who refused that homage, are represented in the twelfth chapter, as flying into the desert, there to be nourished in seclusion and sorrow twelve hundred and sixty years. They cannot, therefore,

be those who in this vision are exhibited as assembled on Mount Zion in the presence of the Lamb, and singing a new song which no one else was able to learn.

The hundred forty-four thousand who have the name of God on their foreheads, are most clearly exhibited as cotemporaneous with apostates who bear the mark of the beast, and are long subsequent, therefore, to the period of Constantine and his successors, as they are subsequent at least to the rise of the ten kingdoms, the acquisition by the Italian hierarchy of a civil dominion, and the erection of the image. And finally, it is manifest from the representations of the seventh chapter, that the period of the sealing is subsequent to the opening of the sixth seal; after, therefore, the series of judgments that are immediately to precede the advent of the Redeemer has commenced, and thence between the first vial and the seventh trumpet; and more than fifteen centuries, therefore, after the reign of Constantine.

Mr. Mede, Mr. Whiston, Vitringa, Bishop Newton, Dean Woodhouse, Mr. Faber, regard the hundred forty-four thousand as representing the pure worshippers during the long triumph of the wild beast and false prophet, and especially the Waldenses, the Wicklifites, the Bohemians, and the Protestants. But the sealing itself is exhibited in the seventh chapter, as accomplished after the opening of the sixth seal, and when, therefore, the triumph of the wild beast has at least nearly closed, and its judgment begun. It is represented also as accomplished within a brief period before the winds of political violence and revolution are excited to injure the earth, the sea, and the trees. It cannot be a period, therefore, of general persecution of the pure worshippers; nor a period of twelve hundred and sixty years, as no such season of calm has ever been witnessed in the politics of the ten kingdoms.

The distinguishing characteristic of the sealed, is a full and emphatic denial and resistance of the assumed right of civil rulers and legalized hierarchies to legislate in the place of God, make their will the ground of obligation and rule of faith and worship, and treat a dissent from it as a crime against them and

against the Almighty. But that attitude was never fully assumed by the Waldenses, the Wicklifites, the Bohemians, nor in any degree by the Protestants as a body. No formal objection was ever made by them generally against the assumption by rulers of that power over their subjects. They only protested against their exerting it in the patronage of an apostate faith and worship, in place of the true. The Bohemians, the Lutherans, and the Reformed more especially, openly asserted the right and duty of rulers to nationalize the true church, and enforce its doctrines and rites on their subjects. Those bodies, therefore, eminent as multitudes of them were for piety, illustrious as thousands and myriads of them were as martyrs, were yet without that peculiarity which is to distinguish the sealed, and thence cannot be the host symbolized by the hundred forty-four thousand.

The believers of the period during which the persecuting powers prevail, are exhibited under the symbols of the woman nourished in the desert, and the witnesses in sackcloth, conditions the reverse of a station on Mount Zion in the presence of the Lamb, and denoting persons of a wholly different period and relation both to God and to men.

And finally, the hundred forty-four thousand are exhibited as a first-fruit to God and the Lamb, while the harvest is represented as afterwards gathered. They are of the same age, therefore, doubtless as those who constitute the harvest, as the first-fruits are first in relation only to others later gathered, of the same season, not of other years. They are the first who are wholly to reject the usurped dominion of men over the worship and worshippers of God, and yield him the rights and the honor which are his due; and are to sustain that relation of a first-offering to God towards the myriads of a later period, who are to be led to a perception. of the errors of the usurping rulers and apostate ecclesiastics, renunciation of their authority, and avoidance of their communion. They are a first-offering also, as they are first redeemed from death under the reign of Christ over the earth as its visible king, and presented to the Father for acceptance.

Mr. Elliott's assumption that the hundred forty-four thousand are the Protestants, is open to the same objections. He like Mr. Mede, Mr. Daubuz, Mr. Whiston, Vitringa, and Dean Woodhouse, regards them as stationed on the earth. But that renders the supposition that they represent the believers of the age of Constantine, the Waldenses, the Wicklifites, the Bohemians, or the Reformers, and their successors, still more irreconcilable with

the symbol. If their station be on the earth, then manifestly they are not the utterers of the song, inasmuch as that descended from heaven, and was chanted before the throne, and before or exterior to the living creatures and elders. But if they are not the singers, they are not exhibited as exerting any agency, which were unlike all other living symbols, and without any conceivable reason. Besides, to suppose they are on earth, and yet enjoy the visible presence of the Lamb, and hear and understand the songs of heaven, is to suppose that their faculties are raised to a supernatural strength, or that they enjoy miraculous means of knowledge. Their standing in the presence of the Lamb, and if they are the hearers, hearing the song from heaven, cannot be interpreted of their attaining a knowledge of the doctrines respecting Christ and the heavenly world, that are taught in the Scriptures. The song is a new one, prompted by a new and peculiar occasion, and was never before sung, therefore, in heaven or on earth. If then they hear it, it is indisputably by a miracle, like that by which the apostle heard it. If they see the Lamb, as he saw him, hear the heavenly chant, know like him from whom it proceeds, and understand its import, then they manifestly are prophets in the same sense as he was. To suppose it otherwise, to regard the representation as indicating nothing more than the illumination believers of the age of Constantine, of the Waldenses, the Bohemians, the Reformers, or their followers of the present day enjoy, were to degrade the symbol and empty it of all its significance. But none of those bodies have given any indications of such a supernatural knowledge, and cannot, therefore, were the supposition allowable that they were on the earth, be those whom the symbol represents.

Mr. Cuninghame likewise supposes their station to have been on the earth, but regards them as representing the living saints who are to be transfigured at the advent of the Redeemer, and caught up to him in the air. But as, if they are to be on the earth, they are to be raised to a peculiarity of relation to Christ, an elevation of faculties, and a grandeur of knowledge immeasurably transcending the highest gifts of ordinary believers, and nothing less than the supernatural sight and sense of prophetic ecstasy; the symbol must indicate, not that they are to be transfigured, but that they are to exercise the prophetic office on earth, and imply that the prophecy of Joel is yet to be fulfilled before the descent of the Redeemer. "It shall come to pass in the last days, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream