cuted throughout the representation made, whether by the same or by a change of imagery, which idea is the development of the relations of the four actors of the prophetical piece or combatants as they appear in the first four seals, one to another. The shifting and changing of imagery, the use of synonymous symbols, does not affect, as has been already shown, the unity of design nor the unity of idea, which, if we would understand an allegorical prophecy, must be steadily kept in view. The symbol, the Two-horned Beast, which has already been once changed in the second version into the Whore, undergoes a farther transmutation and passes into the False Prophet, which last is retained to the end. The change of the two single figures, the Tenhorned and the Two-horned Beasts, into the one composite one of the Ten-horned Beast and the Whore riding on it, was made probably for the purpose of representing the close combination and real unity of these two actors, which is developed in words in ch. xiii., and which, in ch. xvii., is represented by their combination in a compound symbol. The transmutation of the Whore into the new and undescribed symbol, the False Prophet, on the occasion of the final conflict, as the preparations for it are described, ch. xvii. 13, 14, and as it is in part detailed, ch. xix. 11-21, may be held to have been done for the sake of making a full display of the three enemies of the Conqueror on the great and decisive battle-field. Thus, the Whore, who is in herself no proper combatant and could not well be represented going un armed and on foot to battle, is dropped. The Twohorned Beast is not taken up again, because, as may be supposed, this beast had only two horns like a lamb, ch. xiii. 11, and therefore was unable to fight. A fresh symbol is invented, the False Prophet, who goes into battle in the capacity of chaplain to the host, which, though it be only represented by the Dragon and the Beast, consists, as we learn from ch. xvi. 14, of "the kings of the earth and the whole world," that is, the whole world under their influence and represented by these. It is to be observed that, with a due regard to the second sense, the prophet could not properly put arms into the hands of the third combatant, because this combatant stands for an ecclesiastical power. The above may be held to be reasons accounting for the transition made by the prophet from the Two-horned Beast to the Whore, and from the latter to the False Prophet. But the interpreter is neither bound to find reasons nor the prophet to act upon any, in this regard, because it is the principle of the latter to change his imagery. He is therefore at liberty to alter it without reason. mode of representation which he displays with great versatility and profusion throughout his whole book. It is full, from beginning to end, of symbols that are synonymous. With these he can pursue his unity of design just as well as with symbols that are identical. It is a The conflict, however, is the main design which this great symbolical painting displays, and though there are many scenes and figures on its canvass they are all illustrative of the one idea which a war and The second version victory embody. The prophecy opens with the exhibition of a Conqueror and three antagonists in one group of Four Horsemen, to which the prophet's special attention is called by the Four Living-creatures. The first version ends with a magnificent display of triumph and victory. opens with the trumpets of war. form, if not the sole, the leading thread of connection throughout its complex and multifarious visions. Here the development is clearly made that it is to a decisive and final battle that events tend. Three enemies, as in the first version, are marshalled against the single Conqueror, who are here the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. The Conqueror himself appears as the same Horseman on the White Horse, with which the first version and the prophecy itself opened, as if to mark the unity of idea and of design which pervades it. If the single Conqueror is the same, this of itself may be held evidence that his enemies are the same. This Conqueror, in the second version, overcomes, takes captive, and casts into a lake of fire burning with brimstone his three enemies, the Beast, the False Prophet, and the Dragon. This consummation of vengeance has its counterpart in the first version in the tempest, under the Sixth Seal. The war is finished by the destruction of the enemy. Glory, peace, and everlasting felicity are the rewards of this victory. These are described in glowing terms at the close of the Sixth Seal, and in the same and even more glowing language at the close of the Seventh and perfect Seal, chs. xxi. and xxii. The same victory then of one Conqueror over three antagonists is the theme of that part of the prophecy which precedes and of that part which succeeds "the silence in heaven about the space of half an hour," and which thus contains two allegories, displaying the same unity of conception. In the first allegory or version, which is as we have called it and not without reason a Table of Contents to the second, the subject is merely sketched. The four combatants in the contest are displayed in the first four seals resting as it were upon their arms; the shock of battle is undepicted. The events of the contest are described in merely general terms in the two following seals. The fifth seal describes the events as being adverse to the Conqueror. The sixth seal represents them as destructive to his enemies and victory-bringing to himself; with the emblems of which victory and the triumph that follows it the first version closes. The second allegory may be searched with the utmost scrutiny; nothing more than this subject will be found in it. The fourfold group appears here not as before in the form of Four Horsemen, but in the form of a Woman, a Dragon, a Ten-horned Beast, and a Twohorned Beast, which are described in chs. xii. and xiii. at much greater length and with more detail than the correspondent portraitures are given in the first version. They are also seen not simply at rest, as there, but engaged in action. The first of this group is expressed throughout this version by several symbols which are synony mous, and the principal of which are Michael, ch. xii. 7, the Conqueror on the White Horse, ch. xix. 11, which is the same as in the first version; the Two Witnesses, ch. xi. 3; the Lamb upon Mount Zion, ch. xiv. 1, and the New Jerusalem, chs. xxi. xxii. The second, the Dragon, appears under the synonymous names of Satan, the Devil, the old serpent, and the accuser of the brethren. The Beast stands alone and in a bad eminence as the Beast-the only designation applied to him. The Ten-horned Beast is transmogrified into the Whore and the city Babylon of chs. xvii. and xviii., and the False Prophet of ch. xvi. 13, xix. 20. The strictly synonymous nature of these various names or designations may be demonstrated from the identity of signification which they bear in the second sense. But it may also be proved even in the first sense on the two grounds, at once, of unity, and of consistency of design in the piece. Such are the four agents in the second version. They evidently reduplicate the quaternal group of the first. The character of the events described throughout this version is the same as in the first. They resolve themselves into these two grand branches, marked in the first version by being placed, the one, under the fifth, the other, under the sixth seal. The one of these divisions comprehends the depression of the Conqueror and the temporary triumph of his adversaries; the other, the victory of the Conqueror, and the final destruction of his enemies. The reduplication of the fifth seal of the first |