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four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of God in their foreheads.” The number of those that were sealed was one hundred and forty-four thousand, “ of all the tribes of the children of Israel.” The tribes mentioned were the tribes of Juda, of Reuben, of Gad, of Aser, of Nephthalim, of Manasses, of Simeon, of Levi, of Issachar, of Zabulon, of Joseph, of Benjamin. Here is so plain a reference to the tribes as existing at the time, that one would consider it as decisive of the question that the book must have been written before the destruction of the nation. To this it may be said, in reply, that the revelator was perhaps contemplating the tribes retrospectively. But such a supposition conflicts with the plan of the Apocalypse; and moreover, the fourth chapter, which begins the second great division of that book, opens by saying, “Come up hither, and I will show! thee things which must be hereafter.” The tribes did not exist as such, after the dissolution of the nation. And why should these tribes have been mentioned in the manner pointed out, if Judea were not involved in the judgment 2 Why should Jewish Christians alone be mentioned ? We confess we know of no answer that can be given to these queries. We find also references in the Apocalypse to the City of JERUSALEM as still standing, at the time that book was written. Speaking of the two witnesses who had been slain for the testimony of Jesus, the revelator says, “And their dead bodies shall \ lie in the streets of the great city, which spiritually is called ! Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified;” xi. 8. It was a custom with the sacred writers to call one city by the name of another, to signify some point of resemblance. Thus Jerusalem was called Sodom, after the example of Isaiah i. 10, on account of its wickedness; and it was also called Egypt, perhaps for the same reason. It was spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, i. e., it was called so figuratively or metaphorically. But

to set aside all question that Jerusalem was intended, see the revelator's adjunct, “where also our Lord was crucified.” The bodies of the witnesses, then, were to lie in the streets of Jerusalem. But how could this be, if the city had been destroyed ? And further on in the description the revelator said, that after three days the spirit of life entered into the witnesses, and they stood upon their feet, and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them ; “and the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell,” &c., &c. This is the same city, viz., “where our Lord was crucified;” and how could the revelator have prophesied in this manner, had he not written before the destruction of Jerusalem 3 Closely allied to this argument is the one which is founded on the mention of THE TEMPLE in the Apocalypse. As the revelator draws towards the final catastrophe of the Jews, (on our plan of interpreting the Apocalypse,) after the mighty angel had sworn there should be time no longer, he surveyed the temple doomed to destruction. And as it had been carefully measured and laid out when it was built, as described in the prophecy of Ezekiel, so now is it to be measured preparatory to its destruction. Hence says the revelator, “There was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles, and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” Our Lord himself had said, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles ;” Luke xxi. 24. To the outer court, called “the court of the Gentiles,” they had always had access, and consequently there was no need of measuring that ; but the holy temple, and especially the area of the altar, had not been profaned by Gentile feet. They are now to be given up to destruction, as well as the people who worshipped before that holy shrine. “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.” Does not the revelator speak here of the temple as standing in his day ? If so, must not the Apocalypse have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem 2 The efforts of Titus razed the holy building to the ground. Not one stone was left upon another. How, then, can any person explain the revelator's commission to measure the temple, if he wrote after its utter demolition ? But do we not find prophecies in the Apocalypse of the very event—the DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 3 Does not the revelator quote the very language applied by our Lord to that event 2 his identical metaphors ? Our Lord had said, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days, [he had been speaking of the wars, pestilences, and famines, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.” He thus described the fall of the Jewish powers. And what saith the revelator 2 “The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell to the earth,” &c. &c. The terrified victims of these judgments cried, as the revelator described it, “And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;” and this also is quoted from a passage of our Lord, in which he was speaking of the judgment that would come on the Jews. For when the Jewish women bewailed and lamented him, as he was led forth to crucifixion, he said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold the days are coming in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, &c. &c., Then shall they say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.” How can we, then, avoid the conviction, that the figures employed by the revelator in the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse were designed by him to be applied to the fall of the Jews, and the overthrow of their city ? After our Lord had said

(as recorded in the twenty-fourth of Matthew) that the sun should be darkened, and the moon should not give her light, &c. &c., and that then should appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, – the next particular to which he adverted is the gathering together of his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. And it is remarkable that the revelator, after having described the changes in the sun, moon, and stars, (evidently copying our Lord's metaphors,) proceeded in the next place to describe the sealing of God's elect; and the four winds are commanded to be still, and to blow not on the earth, until the process of sealing was fully completed. There is such an agreement here between our Lord and his servant who wrote the Apocalypse, that we cannot resist the conviction that they were both speaking of the Same event. 5. The time of writing the Apocalypse, as certain writers have supposed, can be determined with a considerable degree of certainty, by the references to the Roman emperors which we find therein. In describing the judgment of Rome, the seven-hilled city, the revelator says: “There are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come ; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition;” xvii. 10, 11. Rome was represented by the harlot, who sat on the beast; and the beast represented the empire. This we shall take for granted in this place; and refer the reader to the commentary on that passage. During the revelator's lifetime, there was no city but Rome that could be thought to correspond to his description in the seventeenth chapter. “Besides, (says Prof. Stuart,) in ver, 9, the seven heads of the beast are said to symbolize “the seven hills on which the woman sitteth,' i.e., the seven hills on which Rome was built, the Septicollis Roma of the Latin writers. There is no room for mistake here ; and as little room, it seems to me, is there for mistake in another part

of the same explanatory chapters, viz., ver, 10. Here it is said that the seven heads of the beast also symbolize seven kings, viz., of Rome. The writer proceeds : “Five are fallen; one is ; the other has not yet comé, but when he shall come, he will remain but for a short time.' That the Roman emperors were usually styled Bagulets by the Greeks, needs no proof. That the line or succession of emperors is here meant, and not the primitive kings of Rome, is certain from the connection of the five with the one who is, and the one who is to come. We have only to reckon, then, the succession of emperors, and we must arrive with certainty at the reign under which the Apocalypse was written. If we begin with Julius Caesar, it stands thus: Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius; these make up the five who had fallen. Of course the Apocalypse was written during the reign of Nero, who is the sixth. [And this, it will be remembered, is the fact which is asserted on the title-page of the Syriac version of hel Apocalypse.] If, with some critics, we commence with Augustus, then the Apocalypse was written during the short reign of Galba, who succeeded Nero.” In counting the Roman emperors, only an occasional beginning with Augustus can be shown in classic authors. The almost universal usage is against it. The probability on other grounds is against beginning with Augustus. Every part of the Apocalypse shows that persecution was raging and instant when the book was written. But this could not be true, at most, but a few days after Nero's death, for the persecution was not continued under his successor. Besides, when the writer adverts to the shortness of time in which the seventh king would reign, (which fits Galba especially, as he reigned but seven months,) why, in case he wrote during the reign of Galba, should he overlook the shortness of his reign, and advert in this respect merely to the succeeding reign of Otho 2 There is, moreover, a plain reference, in Rev. xiii. 10, to the future death of Nero, as well as to his then present cruelties. “He that leadeth