hearts with unutterable anguish, which colored with its own sombre hues their glowing anticipations. It is true, they saw with all clearness that these judgments and woes were the necessary consequences of sin and rebellion against God, but this, instead of mitigating, only increased their sorrow, as expressed with the deepest pathos in many such passages as the following:

My tears have been my meat day and night,

While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? (Ps. xlii. 3).
Rivers of water run down mine eyes,

Because they keep not thy law (cxix. 136).

Oh that my head were waters,

And mine eyes a fountain of tears,

That I might weep day and night

For the slain of the daughter of my people! (Jer. ix. 1).

This doubtless was one reason why they called their messages burdens: "The burden of Egypt . . . The burden of Moab. . . The burden of Tyre . . . The burden of Nineveh The burden of Babylon" (Is. xix. 1), and many others. Even God Himself is represented as bearing this burden of

...

. . .

sorrow:

Oh that thou hadst hearkened unto my commandments;
Then had thy peace been as a river,

And thy righteousness as the waves of the sea (Is. xlviii. 18).

Thus also the Lord wept over Jerusalem: "And when He was come near He beheld the city and wept over it, saying, Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong unto thy peace: but now they are hid from thine eyes (Luke xix. 41). O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate : for I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Mat. xxiii. 37-39).

And we ourselves, although the study of prophecy does not make us prophets, yet, while we ponder their messages,

cannot fail to take upon ourselves some portion of their burden, nor to be touched with their sorrow. For notwithstanding the certainty and glory of the crowning result, which in anticipation is a well-spring of joy to all believing souls, yet the sins and judgments of mankind through which it must be reached at last are a grievous burden, too heavy indeed for us to bear in our own strength. Fain would we have it otherwise. Glad indeed should we be if the Lord's people could attain to their white robes, their crowns and palms, without passing through 'the great tribulation' (160). But so it cannot be, either for the individual soul, or the redeemed race. For it is only through plagues of wild beasts, war, pestilence, and famine; through earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, falling stars, and darkened suns; through conflagrations, shipwrecks, railway disasters, explosions, sicknesses, and death; through seas of martyr blood, and the judgments by which it must be avenged; through times of general apostasy, when the corpses of God's witnesses lie unburied in the streets of the great city of this world; through the sorceries, adulteries, and judgments of great Babylon; through the seven plagues poured out upon mankind from the seven golden chalices of the wrath of God; through the final rebellion of the nations deceived by Satan loosed from his chains: it is only through such experiences as these that the earth shall be finally delivered from the primeval curse; that the white-robed people shall enter into the Golden City, and take up their everlasting abode upon the banks of the river of the water of life, which flows forth out of the throne of God and the Lamb, and shall eat of the fruit of the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Ah, how different is all this from what we should have anticipated! How gladly would we have had it otherwise! For to us it would seem that the Lord's kingdom should have gone steadily onwards from the first, ever increasing in extent, power, and glory, until the promises should all be fulfilled. 'But God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways' (Is. lxv. 8). What a fearful reaction followed the first brilliant successes of the Gospel!

What an apostasy in the Roman church; what corruption in the Greek! What a crying necessity for the Reformation of the sixteenth century! Of all this, indeed, the history has been written, and it now causes us little or no surprise. But the disappointment of the boundless hopes of that Reformation through the baleful sectarianism developed out of it, and the hardly less need of another to restore the catholic unity of the church, for which the Lord so earnestly prayed in order that the world might believe' (John xvii. 23): the history of all this has yet to be written, when the enormous evil of our sectarianism shall have come to be recognized.

Thus has it ever been, and thus, as we are instructed by all the prophets, will it continue to be till the end; for even the millennium will be followed by a period of apostasy and judgment. And what does it all mean, but the measureless depth and darkness and horror of sin, the malignity of man's rebellion against God? It was this that crucified the Lord of glory, and shed the blood of the martyrs. Hence the Romish and Greek corruptions and Protestant sectarianism. It is this which has brought, and will continue to bring, such fearful judgments upon the nations, because nothing else can subdue their obstinate rebellion against their true and lawful Sovereign. It is an infinite sorrow. How gladly would we have it otherwise! But in all this turmoil of guilt and punishment not one of the Lord's trusting people shall be left to perish, having the seal of His covenant on their foreheads (157); that is, the Holy Spirit of promise in their souls. For all others there remains only a certain looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall destroy the adversaries' (Heb. x. 27). And thus the evil that is in the world shall at last come to an end, for without this no prophecy closes.

XXIV

THE TEMPLE MEASURED THE COURT OF THE GENTILES CAST OUT THE SAFETY OF THE TRUE CHURCH NOMINAL CHRISTIANS REJECTED XI I-2

This vision also is best comprehended under the sixth trumpet in still further preparation for the seventh. It is closely connected with that of the sealing of the cxliv thousand representing in part the same idea (154), i. e. the safety of the people of God amidst the judgments falling upon the guilty world. But here this idea is strongly contrasted, as it is not there, with the state of mere nominal Christians, who in this life are associated with believers.

1 And there was given unto me a reed like unto a rod, saying, Arise, and measure the temple of God and the altar and them that worship therein.

In the English Bible we have the words, and the angel stood saying,' but there is no 'angel 'in the best manuscripts. No doubt, this word was introduced by some copyist to supply a grammatical subject for 'saying,' where the author chose to leave it unexpressed on account of the indefiniteness of the preceding statement as to who gave him the reed. This he does not tell us, nor by whom the command was given, but evidently he means us to understand that it was all by divine authority. This reed was simply a measuring instrument, but it was 'like unto a rod' with a deep significance: for the rod was the instrument with which land was measured or surveyed for the purpose of determining its ownership, and hence it became a symbol of secure possession, as in the following: "The rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous 'Ps. cxxv. 3). The rod of thine inheritance which thou hast redeemed, mount Zion, wherein thou

hast dwelt (lxxiv. 2). Israel is the rod of His inheritance" (Jer. x. 16). Also, it is a Scriptural symbol of the power of the Lord: "The Lord will stretch forth the rod of thy strength out of Zion" (Ps. cx. 2), and of the strong consolations wherewith He comforts His people: "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" (xxiii. 4). The temple here, as elsewhere, is the symbol of the true church: "Ye are the temple of God. . . .The temple of the living God. . . . Which temple ye are" (95). This altar, by which is to be understood the golden altar of incense (165), symbolizes the life of prayer and worship which is ever a distinguishing trait of the Lord's people and 'them that worship therein' is added as a literal interpretation of the symbols of the temple and the altar, just as 'distress of nations with perplexity' interpret the symbol of 'the sea and the waves roaring' (Luke xxi. 25). The importance attached to this symbol of measuring the temple appears from the fact, that the New Jerusalem is thus measured (Rev. xxi. 15-17), and also the temple in the visions of Ezekiel "And, behold, there was a man whose appearance was like unto the appearance of brass, with . . a measuring reed. . . . So he measured the . . building . . . and the threshold of the gate. . and every little chamber. . and between the little chambers. . also the porch of the gate . . and the parts thereof. . and the breadth of the entry of the gate" (Ez. xl., xli., xlii.): and so on, with the utmost particularity, throughout the building. Hence it is clothed with. great fulness of meaning. For as the accurate measuring of one's land implies the most perfect knowledge of its boundaries and extent with reference to its defence against all other claimants, so this measuring of the temple with 'a reed like unto a rod' represents the Lord's people as perfectly known to Him in the sharpest distinction between them and all others, as His peculiar inheritance which He will by no means suffer to be alienated, as His cherished possession. which He will defend and protect against all invaders. In like manner, St. Paul prays for his fellow Christians, 'that they might know what was the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints' (Eph.