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sealing, John is favoured with a vision of the blessedness of the Redeemed.

"I beheld," he says, "and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne, on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes ? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, these are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." (vii. 9-17.)

This vision takes us back to the glorious rainbow-encompassed throne, on which sat God the Judge of all, and at his right hand' the Lamb as it had been slain; while before the throne burned the seven lamps of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and round about it were the cherubim and the seats of the elders, and an innumerable company of angels. But now, in addition to this glorious assemblage, appeared with loud thanksgivings before the throne, a countless throng" of the redeemed from the earth. It is the opinion of some commentators, that this vision is anticipatory of the future glory of the sealed ones. They have been led to this conclusion, by the expression; These are they which

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came out of the great tribulation. But there are serious objections to this exclusive view of the vision. In the first place, such an anticipation of events is unprecedented and without a parallel in the Apocalypse, where every thing is arranged in chronological order, and events succeed each other in natural sequence. Secondly, the "innumerable multitude" spoken of, gives us an idea of numbers immensely greater than what is conveyed by the definitė term 144,000, even viewed as the aggregation of centuries. Thirdly, they are of "all nations, peoples, kindreds, and tongues"- of the infants as well as the aged, "for of such," said Jesus, "is the kingdom of heaven"-not of the Roman Empire only, or confined to the Christian era :—they belonged to all time, and were gathered from off the face of the whole earth, beginning with Abel, the first who died in faith, the first who came out of great tribulation-and embracing all who died in the faith, from Adam to Moses, from Moses to Christ; those who lived under the law, and those who lived without the law; in every age and in every nation,-those "who feared God and worked righteousness:" trusting for salvation to the blood of atonement, which was shadowed forth in every sacrifice, whether offered on Jewish or on heathen altars.

Whence came they? They came out of great tribulation. “All who will live godly," said our Lord, "must suffer persecution." The Old Testament saints experienced this; and St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, gives us an affecting account of their faith and their sufferings. But he adds, "they received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect."

Wherein then consists the difference between them and us?between those who died in the hope of a Redeemer to come, and those who die in the faith of a salvation accomplished? We read of the Patriarchs, that they gave up the ghost and were gathered unto their fathers;-but now, believers desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. The souls of the faithful before the atonement made on Calvary, did not go to heaven; they were preserved in a separate state (of happiness certainly, but not of glory)

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which is called Hades, sometimes translated Hell-as it is said of our Lord himself, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell:”—it was there,-called also Paradise, as Jesus said unto the dying thief, "To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,"—and it was usually spoken of by the Jews as Abraham's bosom, as in the well-known parable of the rich man and Lazarus:-it was there-into that place the Spirit of Jesus descended, when he expired on the cross. As we read in the Epistle to the Ephesians, "He descended first into the lower parts of the earth "--but his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption. He overcame Death and the Grave. Even when he yielded up the ghost, he openly manifested his power as the Lord of life, for "the earth did quake and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." He thus spoiled principalities and powers, and when He ascended up on high, he led captivity captive (Ps. lxviii. 18); for those who had been held captive by Death in the prison of Hades, were delivered by the Almighty Conqueror, and carried by Him as trophies of his victory, when He entered into heaven. This is also foreshewn by the Prophet Isaiah (xxv. 7, 8), when he describes the Lord as a mighty man bursting open the vaulted roof of the vast cemetery in which the souls of the righteous had been sleeping-"He will destroy the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." And afterwards he adds, (xxvi. 2), "Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in." They entered in, when Jesus ascended up on high; the spirits of the redeemed following in his train with thousands of angels, when the everlasting doors, the gates of heaven, were thrown open to admit the King of glory-the Lord mighty in battle. And there, in the presence of the Lamb, the spirits of the Old Testament saints constitute the general assembly and church of the first born, whose ranks had been swelled by those who, from the ascension of Jesus

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to the period of John's vision, had left the Church below, formed that great multitude which no man could number, who were seen by the Apostle standing before the throne of God, with palms in their hands, indicating the victory they had gained, not by their own might, but through the power of Him that loved them. And now they serve Him day and night in His temple.

This is the clearest as well as most glorious description of the happiness and employment of departed saints that had hitherto been communicated to the Church and looking at the place it occupies in the Apocalypse, it seems peculiarly adapted to the condition of the faithful followers of Christ in that period of history to which the vision evidently refers. The Church, as we have seen, had but recently emerged from a storm of persecution, and many had fallen martyrs to the truth. Now, wealth and honours were heaped upon her, and her love waxed cold; iniquity abounded within her; and though she said, "I am rich and have need of nothing," she was poor and miserable, and blind and naked. The outward structure was indeed magnificent, but there was no Urim and Thummim, the glory of the Lord had departed. There only existed a small remnant, the sealed ones, the 144,000: and they were despised and insulted,

Men the world deserved not,

Hard and cheerless was their lot.

But though humble and contemned here below, an eternal and transcendent glory awaited them in heaven above.

For their comfort, through long ages of obscurity and distress, for the confirmation of their faith and the strengthening of their hope, this revelation of the white-robed multitude before the throne was given. This multitude they felt persuaded they should, with every faithful follower of Jesus, be permitted to join. To this multitude their thoughts would often revert-and their lips apostrophise, as they sang in joyful anticipation

"See how the victors go,

In raiment white as snow,

With glory crowned.

The Lamb grants them, through grace,

Around His throne a place,

On whom death frowned.

How blest, when we can say,

All else is fled away

And love prevaileth :

No longer faith and hope

We need to bear us up,

Love never faileth."

When the vision of the white-robed multitude was withdrawn, the Apostle's attention was directed to the Lamb with the book in his hand. Six of the seals had been opened, and now-" when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour." (viii. 1.)

Various opinions have been offered concerning the meaning of this short silence in heaven-some referring it to the rest of the Church after the triumph of Christianity under Constantine—and others to the peace in the Empire previous to the irruptions of the Goths in the year 390; but neither opinion is supported by history. In the Church the well-known heresies of the Arians and the Donatists, led to the most deplorable disorders and fearful massacres. St. Hilary, who lived at this time, says, "there are as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us. Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries. We condemn either the doctrines of others in ourselves, or our own in that of others, and reciprocally tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's ruin." "The bands of civil society;" says Gibbon, were torn asunder by the fury of religious factions.:" and the adherents of rival candidates in Rome and Constantinople decided the election of a Bishop by an appeal to arms, and in mutual fury filled the streets with the bodies of the slain. The so-called Novatian heretics "were imprisoned, persecuted and driven into exile. Whole troops of them were massacred, and their towns and villages were utterly destroyed." In another portion of the Empire,

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