of the poor and despised Christians left the Empire at this time, and took refuge among the barbarians! Many of them, we may well believe, the ancestors of the Paulicians in the East, and the Waldenses in the West. This is a striking illustration of the way in which God screens his faithful people from the judgments he is about to inflict on a corrupted Church. As he declares in Rev. iii. 10, "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” The number of the sealed was 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel, 12,000 of each tribe. Our attention has already been drawn to the Israelites, as typical of the Christian Church; for all who are of faith are the children of Abraham, (Gal. iii. 7). But we must not forget that many thousands of the Jews themselves believed; some perhaps out of every tribe. Gentiles, however, as well as Jews, are included in this numbering and sealing; for in Christ Jesus there is no distinction,-neither circumcision nor uncircumcision: there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free. And, as if to intimate this more pointedly, we find here an arrangement of the tribes different to any in the Old Testament. There they are mentioned according to priority of birth: or more usually, the children of the free women are named first, and those of the bond women afterwards. Here, there is no such distinction; Judah takes precedence of Reuben, and bond and free children are mixed together. Levi also takes his place among the tribes, shewing that his office of priesthood was at an end—his attendance on the temple service no longer necessary; that he now belonged to a Church whose great High Priest had passed into the heavens; and all whose members on the earth were an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God, by Jesus Christ. (1 Peter ii. 5.) But why is the tribe of Dan omitted? This question I once put to a popular preacher, and his answer was, To make room. for the tribe of Levi! This unsatisfactory reply is the best that has been given; and the only one that I am aware of, except a conjecture that Dan may possibly have originally been written where Manasses now stands. But I believe that Dan was purposely omitted, because of the early departure of that tribe from the pure worship of God, and their continued idolatry during the whole period of the existence of the Israelitish kingdom. And this, notwithstanding those memorable words of Jacob when blessing their father Dan, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord:"words which must have been to them a perpetual reproach when the faith and hope thus expressed by the dying Patriarch, was contrasted with their own wretched idolatry. Soon after the death of Joshua, the Danites migrated from Zorah and Eshtaol to the neighbourhood of Mount Lebanon,-the most northern part of Palestine. On their way they stole Micah's gods, and took with them the grandson of Moses to be the priest to their tribe:—and they worshipped the graven images all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh. And when Jeroboam made the golden calves, he placed the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan; and "this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan :"-words which seem to imply, that the people might worship the Lord (though not in the way he had appointed) before the calf in Beth-el, but at Dan the worship was undisguised idolatry. It is a singular fact, that the worship of the calf, as stated by various travellers, is still practised in the same locality, by the Druses, a people whose origin has never been ascertained, Dr. Clarke supposed them, because of their worship of the calf, to be descended from the mixed multitude who accompanied the Israelites from Egypt; others have imagined them to be the offspring of the Crusaders; and others conjecture them to be descended from the followers of the fanatical Caliph Hakim. The celebrated French traveller Lamartine, says, "In my opinion the Druses are one of those nations, whose origin is lost in the darkness of remote ages, but which is derived from the highest antiquity. In a physical point of view, their race has a great resemblance to that of the Jews; and their worship of the calf would induce the belief, either that they were of Samaritan origin, or derive their descent from those tribes of Arabia Petræa through whose example the Israelites adopted this species of idolatry." But we know that the Israelites did not borrow the worship of the calf from any Arab tribe, and that it existed among them long before the Samaritans were planted in Palestine. It seems, therefore, a much more probable supposition, that the Druses inherited their peculiar idolatry from the Danites, whose land they now partially inhabit; and that they are, in fact, really descended from that remarkable tribe; especially as it is stated that their physiognomy is decidedly Jewish-that their language is a dialect of Arabic which is closely allied to the Hebrew-and that in their dress and many of their customs, they resemble the ancient Israelites. From their vicinity to the mountains, it would be easy for the Danites to escape the captivity in which the other tribes were involved. A few resolute men, says Admiral Napier, might defend the passes of the Lebanon against the best appointed army. The Druses are a warlike and independent race, owning only occasionally a nominal subjection to the Turks, and are ruled by their own chiefs. Thus verifying Jacob's prediction concerning the Danites, even to this day :-" Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel." The Druses seem very indifferent regarding religion-worshipping with the Mahomedans one day and with Christians on the next. Their own peculiar worship of the calf is performed in secret, and none but the initiated are permitted to attend. Assuming these statements as facts—and there appears no good reason to doubt them-we may perceive that by their isolated situation, as well as by their abandonment to idolatry, the Danites became completely separated from the other tribes of Israel; and we are thus furnished with a sufficient reason why the name of Dan is omitted when the spiritual Israel are sealed by the angel of the Lord. It may also be remarked, as a proof of the apostasy of the Danites, and their excision from the Israelitish stock, that an opinion prevailed, both among Jews and Christians in the early ages, that Anti Christ was to be of the tribe of Dan: founded partly on the prophecy of Jacob, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord;"as if the posterity of Dan would not await it; and partly on the tribe of Dan not being sealed in the Revelation. Hence it is supposed Attila affected to be called King of the Danes, and attempted to establish an Anti-Christian empire. It has been observed, that the 144,000 sealed ones were but a small number, compared with the vast body of professing Christians now in the Roman empire. This had always been true; but at the period to which the vision refers, when Christianity had become the religion of the State, myriads professed it only by compulsion or in hypocrisy. Taking the amount of the population of the twelve tribes when united as a kingdom under David or Solomon, the 144,000 sealed ones indicates a proportion of only one in fifty-a proportion small indeed. But the Church of Christ has always been a little flock—“ for many are called, but few are chosen." When meditating on this solemn fact, we may be permitted to ask, Why is this? Our Lord himself gives the answer, when he said to the Pharisees, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." May we, as individuals, "give all diligence to make our calling and our election sure," that we may be numbered among the sealed ones, the spiritual members of the true Church; and so "abide in Him, that when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming." Hold o'er thy church, Lord, thy protecting hand, And in thy truth O may she ever stand; May thy ransom'd people shew forth thy praises, And be devoted to thy name, Lord Jesus, Until thou com'st. LECTURE IV. THE WHITE-ROBED MULTITUDE.-OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL.- THE sealing of the 144,000 servants of God, described in the seventh chapter, occupied our attention towards the close of the preceding Lecture. These, we endeavoured to shew, signified the Church of God-like the Israelites in the wilderness, separated from the world -enjoying his presence, and preserved by his power. We shall have occasion, afterwards, to speak of the Church under the figure of a Woman, living in this wilderness condition for 1260 years. But at present it is interesting to refer to St. Augustine, who lived at the very period indicated in the vision, when the Church was united with the State-and its members were "part of iron and part of clay." Augustine maintained, in opposition to the prevailing heresies, the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone. In his celebrated work "The City of God," he speaks of the justified as the only inhabitants of Zion, and describes their privileges, their number, their citizenship, their employment, their objects, and their future glory,—and that these alone, and not all who were called by the name of Christ, constituted the true Church. This select and sealed number is repeatedly presented to our notice in other passages of the Apocalypse, and under various figures:—as the two Witnesses in the eleventh chapter,—the Woman clothed with the Sun in the twelfth, the Saints in the thirteenth, and again in the fourteenth chapter as the 144,000 followers of the Lamb, having his Father's name written in their foreheads, who are "without fault before the throne of God." In this seventh chapter, immediately after the vision of the |