years? I think the two most marked must be considered to be that of Cyrus' accession and conquest of Babylon, B. C. 536, and that of Xerxes' splendid progress against Greece in 481, 480, just before his great catastrophe. I prefer the latter ;-first, because it is an epoch of the exhibition of Persian greatness distinctively set forth in another of Daniel's prophecies; secondly, because whereas there is no terminating epoch of historic note to suit the commencing epoch of Cyrus' conquest of Babylon, there is, as we shall presently see, a very marked terminating epoch to suit the commencing epoch of Xerxes' triumphant progress into Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece.-The circumstance of the final catastrophe of his armament and expedition is no more an objection to our selecting it as a most notable epoch of Persian greatness and supremacy, than the final catastrophe of Napoleon's Russian expedition in the snows of Moscovy, to our selecting the year of the assemblage of that mighty anti-Russian armament, and homage done to him by the princes of Christendom at Dresden, when he passed onwards to conduct it, as the most notable epoch of Napoleon's greatness.3-That it is not a mere selection made ex post facto simply to answer that which later history has suggested to my mind as the terminating

1 Dan. xi. 2: "And now I will show thee the truth. Behold there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia: and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength, through his riches, he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia." Theodoret notes the epoch. See my p. 377 Note 3, suprà.

Herodotus (vii. 1) uses the word edoveeTо of the stir in Asia on this occasion. And Bishop Thirlwall in his History of Greece, taking up the word, writes; "For three years all Asia was kept in a constant stir," with reference to the three last years of Darius; and, with reference to the four first of Xerxes following, "For four years more Asia was still kept in restless turmoil:" so illustrating unconsciously, in both the one clause and the other, Daniel's prophecy.-On the extraordinary exhibition of Persian greatness and riches in the expedition Herodotus' account must be consulted. In the Council held on his accession, Herodotus mentions (vii. 8) that Xerxes avowed it as his object in the Greek expedition, to march through Europe, and reduce the whole earth under his empire. "The Deity," he added, "impels me to it."

2 Counting from 538-6 B.C. the 2300 years would expire in 1762-4 A.D.; a period marked by no event of importance, as regards either the breaking up of the Turkman power, or the cleansing of Greek Christendom from Mahommedism. 3 "Earthly state has never reached a prouder pinnacle, than when Napoleon in June 1812 gathered his army at Dresden,-that mighty host unequalled in all time, and there received the homage of subject-kings." Arnold, Lect. on Mod. Hist. p. 177.

epoch of the 2300 years, will appear from this,—that Mr. Bicheno, writing in 1797, selected the same commencing epoch to the prophecy; and prognosticated accordingly that we might expect to see the cleansing of the sanctuary begun in the year 1819.1 In this he calculated from Xerxes' starting from Susa, B. C. 481.2 But it is evidently as fit to calculate from his starting from Sardis, and passage through Thrace and Macedonia, in the year following. In which case not 1819, but 1820, would be the terminating year of the 2300 years. Thus then in one of these two years we might have inferred that the judicial infliction on the sanctuary and host of Greek Christendom would be withdrawn, and the breaking up begin very notably of the Turkman Moslem power: in other words, and to use another metaphor, that then the drying up of its flood from the Euphrates would have a commencement :-that same event that is the subject of the 6th Vial.

§2.-COMMENCEMENT AND PROGRESS OF THE DRYING

UP OF THE TURKISH FLOOD FROM THE EUPHRATES.

So the year 1820 drew on, which seemed marked out in Daniel's ancient prophecy, as the destined epoch for the breaking up of the Turkman power, and drying up of its flood from the Euphrates.3-During the progress

1 Signs of the Times, Third Part, p. 268. A Note on p. 252 mentions 1797 as the date of first publication. His view of the prophecy generally is that of Bishop Newton.

2 The date is determined to 481 by a famous eclipse of the sun. See Dr. Hale's Chronology, Vol. iv. p. 140, 3rd Edition.

3 Compare on the figure Ezek. xxx. 12, "And I will make the rivers dry," said of the conquest of Egypt: also Isa. xliv. 27, "That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry thy rivers: "the figure being taken from the overflowing Nile in the one case, the overflowing Euphrates in the other.

Tillinghast, a commentator who wrote 200 years ago, thus expounded the symbol in this Vial of the Turks. "By the river Euphrates we are to understand the Ottoman or Turkish empire. It is called the great river because of the multitude of people and nations therein. The people of all others accounted the greatest are the Turks; who therefore, and no other, are here to be understood; especially as the Euphrates in Apoc. ix, under the 6th Trumpet, by general consent of expositors has reference to the Turkish power."

of the revolutionary wars in Europe, which we have been lately reviewing, though not without an early sprinkling of the Vial, it had yet remained comparatively uninjured. For the French expedition of 1798, which conquered Egypt, was soon expelled by the English under Abercrombie ; 2 and the political state of the Turkish empire became as before. And in 1802 a Christian commentator, musing on this prophecy, expressed his marvel as to the means by which the Vial was to take effect, and an empire, still so populous and mighty, to be wasted and dried up. 3-So things continued in the main till the very beginning of 1820. That year the Ottoman empire," says the Annual Register for 1820, "found itself freed at once from foreign war and domestic rebellion." But before the year ended how was the scene changed; and what causes introduced of exhaustion and distress that have since then never ceased to operate !-I proceed to sketch them in brief; abstracting almost entirely from Dr. Keith.

The first cause that so operated was internal revolt and insurrection. In the summer of 1820 Ali Pasha of Yanina asserted his independence and by his revolt precipitated the Greek insurrection, which had been for some time silently preparing. In October the Greek islanders called in their merchant ships. In November the Suliot Greeks returned to their country from the Ionian islands, and joined the revolt, in alliance with Ali their former oppressor. In February 1821 Chourshid Pasha, of Tripolizza, having marched from thence against Yanina, leaving the Morea almost destitute of Turkish soldiers, the Moreote Greeks broke out into in

The dates were as follows. Jan. 1800 the expedition sailed: in July it took Alexandria: July 22 followed the battle of the Pyramids and capture of Cairo. 2 A.D. 1801.

3"By what means the Turkish empire shall be reduced to this helpless state (an empire formerly distinguished for its enthusiastic loyalty, ferocity, and valour, and which is even at this day as populous as any other upon the earth, the Chinese excepted), is not intimated in this verse, and will perhaps remain concealed till the events themselves shall remove the veil. However this is certain, that a very extraordinary disaffection in the people to the government must take place to fulfil the prophecy." (i.e. of the 6th Vial,) Galloway on the Revelation, p. 258. 4 Keith, ii. 258.

surrection. This was early in April. The insurrection quickly extended to the Ægean isles, and districts of Northern Greece, Epirus, and Thessaly; while at the same time the standard of revolt was raised also in the trans-Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. -Does the reader think me too particular in the dates? I have given them that he may more minutely compare what then occurred on this Greek rising against the Turkman domination, with what occurred just 2300 years before on the Greek rising against the Persian. There is a striking parallel between the two; which to myself at least appears quite to deserve observation.

The progress and successful issue of the Greek insurrection is well known. An irruption of the Prince Royal of Persia into the Asiatic provinces of Turkey in 1821 and 1822 favoured it. Moldavia and Wallachia were indeed reduced. But in the Morea the Greeks held the country, the Turks being shut up in the fortresses and a Turkman army of 30,000, that entered to re-conquer it, having been destroyed in 1823 in detail,

Spring. Revolt in Thrace against the April.-General revolt of the Greeks

Persians.

in the Morea, Wallachia, and Moldavia.

Sept. or Oct.-Battle of Platæa, and Oct. 5.-Capture of Tripolizza, and deliverance of Greece. liberation of the Pelopon

nesus.

2 It was at the close of the summer of 1821 that the Prince Royal first advanced into Turkey, by way of Van on the Euphrates, as far as Bayazid; and the next summer again, nearly as far as Erzeroum, having defeated an opposing army of 50,000 Turks. In either case his further progress was stopped by the cholera breaking out fearfully in his army.

the freedom of the peninsula was nearly completed by the insurgents. By sea the islander Greeks emulated their ancestors of Salamis and Mycale; and, attended with almost uniform success, encountered and vanquished the superior Turkish and Egyptian fleets, especially in the battles of September 1824.-Meanwhile the sympathies of Western Christendom were awakened in behalf of their brother Christians struggling for independence; above all other the dreadful massacres made by the Turkish admiral in the conquest of Scio.2 And just when at length the tide of success had been turned by the Egyptian armament of Ibrahim Pasha against them,3 and the Morea was again all but subjected by him, the united fleets of England, France, and Russia, (in contravention of all their usual principles of policy) interposed in their favour; attacked and destroyed the TurcoEgyptian fleets in the battle of Navarino, Sept. 1827; and so both saved Greece, and, by destroying the Turkish fleet, prepared the way for other disasters quickly to follow on that devoted empire.

For,-not to dwell on the awful scene of the massacre of the Janizaries at Constantinople, whereby, in the vain hope of reforming and so resuscitating the Turkish military power, the Sultan swept away 30,000 of those troops whose ancestors had been to the Porte its chief arm of victory,*—I say, not to dwell on this, the scourge of the most disastrous foreign war was added by its own infatuation to all its other woes. "Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat." The Sultan appealed to the

"In the engagements of the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 30th September the Turks are said to have lost twelve frigates, twenty brigs, and more than eighty transports.' Annual Register for 1825. 2 In 1822.

3 Ibrahim first landed in Greece, on the Sultan's requisition, in 1825. 4 July 16, 1826.-The Janizaries had revolted on the Sultan's attempting to force on them the Nizam Djedid, or new system of military discipline: on which they were surrounded in the square of the Etmeidan, massacred by discharges of grape-shot; and, on their retiring to their barracks, the barracks set on fire, and cannonading continued against them through the whole night following, until there remained no more victims or fuel for the one and the other. "The morning," says Mr. Walsh, "presented a frightful scene of burning ruins slaked in blood; a huge mass of mangled flesh and smoking ashes." Walsh's Narrative quoted by Keith, ii. 265.