Study of the Apocalypse should promote holy fear, unflinching obedience, patient progress and patient waiting, unhesitating trust, conformity to the Perfect Will. Time devoted to the cultivation of these cannot be wasted time. Moreover, so long as these are aimed at, to sit down ignorant and even to rise up equally ignorant may along with these virtues help forward humility.

Ignorance with humilty can serve and please God: knowledge without humility cannot. Thus humble ignorance secures the essentials of wisdom, whilst unhumble knowledge is folly. Would humble knowledge not be better than humble ignorance? Yes, if granted: no, if denied.

St. Peter after mentioning how prophets of old searched for knowledge and angels desired it, winds up with a practical precept to ourselves unto whom the Gospel has been preached : "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy."

Gracious Lord Jesus, grant us so to read, search, desire, pray, that being sober and hoping to the end we may obey Thy Will and be conformed to Thy Sanctity.

The merchantman who found the pearl of great price was one who sought for goodly pearls: not one who never sought at all.

Darkness and thick darkness cover you. I know it but if in addition I keep my eyes shut, light itself springing up would fail to enlighten me.-If the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch.-I know it: but if the blind grope in prayer for himself and for all his fellows, who knows but that some of the afflicted company may be advanced to see?

O Christ our Light Whom even in darkness we
(So we look up) discern and gaze upon,
O Christ, Thou loveliest Light that ever shone,
Thou Light of Light, Fount of all lights that be,
Grant us clear vision of Thy Light to see;

Tho' other lights elude us, or begone
Into the secret of oblivion,

Or gleam in places higher than man's degree.
Who looks on Thee looks full on his desire,
Who looks on Thee looks full on Very Love:
Looking, he answers well, What lack I yet?'

His heat and cold wait not on earthly fire,

His wealth is not of earth to lose or get;
Earth reels, but he has stored his store above.

13. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

Here and there a ray seems to be vouchsafed, a broken light. "God is the Lord Who hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, yea, even unto the horns of the altar." "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my Redeemer."

Whatever historical coincidences with St. John's prophetic revelation may be cited as having already in part fulfilled it, these and such as these I leave to the authoritative handling of my teachers. "Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain."

Yet meditation is lawful to all of us. Some there must be who shall be blessed according to the promise: "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off. Thine heart shall meditate terror. . . Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down."

Whether natural or spiritual, eyes that look are the eyes likely to see, Meditation fixes the spiritual eye on matters worthy of insight: it sees something, it may gradually perceive more and more. At first Pharaoh's daughter discerned only an ark of bulrushes; next one of the Hebrews' children; at last Moses. The Brazen Serpent was ordained a channel of healing to those death-stricken Israelites who obediently gazed upon it, although we are not told that even one of them could decipher its Divine symbolism.

In the Jewish tabernacle the Altar of Incense was a golden altar, an altar of acceptance, its horns bearing a distinct part in acts of reconcilement for sins of ignorance. The brazen Altar of Burnt Offering likewise had horns.

The Altar being, so to say, one stronghold of God's Mercy, became so in a minor degree of man's mercy, the lower illustrating the higher as appeared when Adonijah caught hold on the horns of the Altar, "saying, Let King Solomon swear unto me to-day that he will not slay his servant with the sword. And Solomon said, If he will show himself a worthy man, there shall not an hair of him fall to the earth."

Thus we apprehend this "Voice from the four horns" of the

celestial Golden Altar as a voice of judgment proceeding from a stronghold of mercy. "The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand."

14. Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

Amongst the seven Angels of the trumpets the sixth alone is described as executing a double function: he sounds the sixth blast, and he also looses the bonds of four other angels.

That these four angels "were bound in the great river Euphrates" recalls to our mind Jeremiah's prophecy of an anterior judgment: "For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood: for the Lord God of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates."

Euphrates had its source in Eden. There it nourished, refreshed, beautified, the fertile Garden; being constituted a minister of pleasure, an agent of preservation and fecundity. Eden is not more unlike the outer world, than Euphrates at its pure fountain head in Paradise appears unlike the same Euphrates earth-bound, earth-spurning, earth-contaminated, rushing downward to the harvestless sea.

Innocence hedged in Eden: sin breaking through that hedge disparadised Paradise, so far as mortal man was concerned. Guilt hedges in the world: penitence breaking through that hedge recovers and re-enters Paradise, now made the anteroom of Heaven.

Loss it seems is never simply recouped: the precise forfeit is not restored. Loss may remain irretrievable, or it may be more than compensated.

15. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

Once again at the loosing of these four angels it is our comfort that their period of devastation is limited, and that they are not self-ordained but "prepared " for their work. "My times are in Thy hand."

I know not whether so long as we read of the "third part" being destroyed and so by implication the two-thirds remaining, it may systematically be viewed as an indication that the general day of grace is not yet ended, and that probation is prolonged.

If I may so view it, the Judgment in Eden shows forth a sample of such severe compassion: the serpent condemned, Adam and Eve reprieved. "The one shall be taken, and the other left," appears to be a formula of separation beyond appeal.

We read but of one Angel destroying the Egyptian firstborn, Israel numbered under David, Sennacherib's host. What will four do?

O Lord, they will do Thy bidding and no more, Thy will and no more, Thy pleasure and no more. Alleluia. Amen. 16. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand and I heard the number of them.

:

Number oftentimes expresses a total by man innumerable. What St. John heard, that he states: he neither accounts for it, nor requires us to realize it. Simply he knew it by revelation, and through him we in our turn know it.

Which instance exemplifies a general rule as regards revelation. We are not bound to account for, or always even to realize intellectually, its truths: we are bound to accept them, and we are further bound when called upon unhesitatingly and literally to restate them.

"The army of the horsemen " now first mentioned (at least explicitly) comes upon us with startling abruptness. As when Delilah said, "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson,"—or as when "the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host."

17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

The wise Preacher warns us: "A dream cometh through the multitude of business. . . In the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God."

Yet from some dreams otherwise apparently vain may perhaps be derived one illustrative gleam on the passage in hand. Often in such dreams images appear which we identify with certainty as representing cognate objects, which yet they by no means accurately reproduce: so (if the word horse is to be understood literally) "the horses in the vision" were recognized by St. John as horses despite their unparalleled features. "Them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of

jacinth, and brimstone."-As it were an embodiment of fire. Jacinth displaying tints of fire and smoke might seem petrified flame.

"The heads of the horses were as the heads of lions" :behold his neck clothed "with thunder" !—" And out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone":-" the glory of his nostrils is terrible." Yet betide what may all saints are preserved who fear not, but stand still to see the salvation of the Lord. Moses and the children of Israel had newly experienced this when they sang: "I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea... And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea."

18. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

19. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

Thus we are not told definitely that the terrible riders, as distinguished from their horses, slew any.

This visitation reads like a rehearsal, forestalment, foretaste, of hell itself; fire, smoke, brimstone, and as it were "that old serpent," working visibly.

I once read of a woman who in her room was converted from irreligion by hearing a hubbub of drunken folk outside in the street. She recoiled from an eternity spent with such, and turned her feet unto the testimonies.

Lord Jesus, grant unto us the like grace and wisdom.

"Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked."

The fire, smoke, brimstone, "killed": the serpent-heads "do hurt." If we may trace a difference between the two effects, killed may remind us of the second death; do hurt may press home upon us that the second death will not be annihilation but torture.

There is fear, and fear. Wise Abigail's fear sped her, foolish Nabal's fear paralyzed him.

20. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk :