2d. The peculiar and anomalous position of this pause, which is after the breaking of a seal.

3d. The circumstance that the subject is ended at this pause, and that what follows the pause is a repetition of it.

4th. The address of the living-creatures to John to "Come and see" the representations of the first four seals.

5th. The perfectness and Scriptural character of the plan of the prophecy which reduplication delivers.

it at once.

The first, the "silence in heaven about the space of half an hour," is a notable fact in the delivery of the prophecy. It must have a meaning. What is it? This is a question which judicious commentators have declined answering, and to which the foolish have given foolish answers. Reduplication answers This is the division between the first and the second versions of the prophecy. This is a plausible answer; let us see if it is as sound as it is plausible. It is the design of the prophecy, as has been already shown and proved on the ground of unity in its design, to deliver itself in a series of pictures contained within a seven-sealed book. Now whatever is not contained in this seven-sealed book cannot consistently, with this design, be regarded as forming any part of the prophecy. It is the design to deliver the prophetic revelations in pictures on the sevensealed book; in the silence there is no picture, consequently there is no prophecy. Yet, although not prophetical, it is a main and striking feature of a

prophetical book; it is such a pause as cannot have been made without design, and cannot be regarded as without meaning. It is not prophetical, but yet it must have meaning. What is it? Now there can be but two meanings attached to it when its prophetical character is discarded, as it must be, to one or other of which we must have resort. It will be difficult to conceive of any other except two. One of these is that which is to be found in many commentaries, to wit, that it gives an air of dignity to the seven trumpets which follow. It is held that a suspension of representation for half an hour has been inserted here to impress the mind with the importance and awfulness of what is predicted under the seven trumpets. This is one meaning, if it can be called a meaning; it is much more a device. The other meaning, and it is really such, is that it forms a division of the prophecy into two parts, which parts are two versions. Now let us consider if the first meaning be tenable; if it be not tenable, the other will necessarily follow. The first might be more tenable than it is if there were any other pause in the book of a similar kind, in virtue of which it might support itself on the ground of an analogy drawn between them. Thus if there were a silence, say of one hour's duration, before the representation of the four great dominions of the book, or any great dominions represented in it, or if there were a pause of a quarter of an hour, or some other definitely measured space of time to be found in it, but there is nothing of the kind. It cannot be held, then, as any thing else but an anomaly of

a very strange character that there should be a pause of about half an hour's duration before the trumpets. Why should the trumpets have this special honor, which is not accorded to any other vision in the book? But the sense itself attributed is highly objectionable. Does not such a mode of impressing the mind with dignity descend to the level of puerility? It is such a device as might be conceived to be adopted by a raree-showman, exhibiting a spectacle to boys. It is a device known to have been practised on men by certain monarchs, who have caused their subjects to wait upon their presence for precisely that length of time which they held to be commensurate with their exalted majesty. But it appears to us that such a device as this is beneath the simple dignity of this great symbolic work, and that on this ground alone it is untenable. But besides this, there is no ground for saying that the silence gives dignity to the trumpets, for if it gives dignity at all, it gives dignity not alone to the trumpets, but to all that follows it. There is nothing which divides the trumpets from the remainder of the representations of the book; there is no subsequent pause. The shadow of dignity, then, must be conceived to pass from the silence itself on to the end of the book, seeing that its effect is unbroken. If it gives dignity to any thing at all, then, it gives dignity to the representations of the seventh seal, for these are what follow it. This is one meaning; it is barely tenable, and if tenable at all, it is reconcilable with regarding the pause as an advertisement of the second and more perfect version of

the prophecy in the seventh seal. But the other meaning will stand on its own merits; it is not a jejune device, but is masculine sense. According to it the "silence" is the mark of division between the first and the second versions of the prophecy. This sense is simple and good. It is, moreover, impossible to deprive the pause of this meaning, even if we could find another, for every pause necessarily forms a division. Let the mind do as it will, it cannot separate the idea of a division from a pause measured out to the extent of about the space of half an hour in a series of continuous representations. This mode of forming a division is recognized by the prophet himself, who divides the representations of his prophecy one from another, by giving us to understand, as he does on many occasions, that a lapse of time occurred between them. He plainly, then, recog nizes the principle of marking a division of representation by the division of time, although he nowhere divides by a definite period excepting here. We find also this principle of marking a division recognized and operative in the double symbolic prophecies. The one version is divided from the other by a lapse of time. The prediction regarding Joseph's future greatness is delivered twice to him in two sets of symbols, and with an interval between each representation, of what, as appears from the narrative, was a day at least, Gen. xxxvii. 5–11. An interval is also marked in the double dream of Pharaoh, for Pharaoh awoke, slept, and "dreamed the second time," Gen. xli. 4 and 5. In the double prediction of Daniel, chs. ii.

and vii., there occurs an interval of a very long period, for the first version of the prophecy is delivered under one monarch, and the second under another. It is not only then the natural and necessary effect of an interval of time to form a division, but it is, as is apparent, the method adopted in Scripture to form it. When it is said, then, that "the silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" has the meaning, or let it be rather said, has the effect of giving dignity to the representations, this, which is nearly void of meaning, is also fanciful and destitute of support from any part of Scripture, or from any mode of representation followed in it. But when we say, on the other hand, that its meaning is to form a division, this, it is obvious, is an interpretation which is based on a principle of representation developed in Scripture. According to Scripture an interval in the representation divides. We appear then shut up to the conclusion, that the silence in heaven for about the space of "half an hour" forms a division of the prophecy into two grand parts. But it cannot divide the prophecy itself, for according to the title it is one; it is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him." Here is a paradox, but reduplication explains the seeming paradox, and it alone explains it. How strong an argument is there here for reduplication! We see an explication of this paradoxical division of what is really one in the dream of Pharaol, which is analogical with the Revelation in this respect of containing a division in it, and being yet

one.

This dream is twofold and one. Joseph, after