denoting the famine, disease, and pestilence, that usually follow the track of a conqueror,—and especially followed the desolating progress of Attila. It is stated also, that a rivulet traversing the plain on which was fought the terrible battle alluded to above, was swollen by blood into the appearance of a torrent, and that those who were tormented by thirst and the fever of their wounds, drank blood from its channel."

But the term wormwood appears to me to have a farther and more significant meaning. It is used in various places of scripture in connection with idolatry or apostasy. Thus Moses, in Deuteronomy (xxix. 18), exhorting the Israelites to make a covenant with the Lord, warns them against man, woman, or family, whose heart "turneth away from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood." So also the apostle Paul exhorts the Hebrews (xii. 15) to "look diligently lest any man fall from the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled." In like manner, the false prophets are threatened by Jeremiah (xxiii. 15), "I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall." And the people of Judea, whom they had deceived, thus complain, "The Lord our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble." (Jer. viii. 14.) These passages clearly shew, that idolatry and apostasy result in bitter disappointment and spiritual death. Their fruits are wormwood and gall.

Now Attila, the king of the Huns, who seems to be the chief agent employed in this trumpet-vision, is distinguished from his predecessors, in the two previous judgments, by his religion. Alaric and Genseric were nominally Christians, but Attila was a Pagan; and his great object was the overthrow of Christianity and the establishment of an Anti-christian universal empire. In this he well nigh succeeded. His empire was to be built upon the worship of the sword-god Mars. The sword which he wore was

the visible symbol of his God; and to it were offered up human sacrifices, consisting of Christians whom he had captured in war. It was thus many drunk of the bitter cup of Paganism. But the Christians did not unite against him, as might have been expected —many joined him, and helped forward his design. Some, because of the sectarian hatred which distinguished those ages-some because of their secret leaning towards the old Pagan rites-and others in consequence of the very general expectation of the termination of the Roman empire, and the immediate revelation of Antichrist, which marked the era of Attila. But all these various parties, as well as his own Hunnish and Pagan adherents, were doomed to bitter disappointment;—to them it was wormwood and gall* when Attila, almost without a cause, commenced his retreat from Italy, and in a few months afterwards, was numbered with the dead. "The establishment of his government over the habitable world," says the late learned Dean of Manchester, "was inconsistent with the spread of Christianity; and the Almighty will, which had sent him as a scourge on the population of the Roman empire, permitted him not to complete the overthrow of true religion; but annihilated, by his decease, the great fabric he had constructed, which was immediately dissolved by internal conflict in the absence of his absolute and decisive authority. The mighty one was gathered to his fathers; the power of the Huns, which had shed a baleful and meteorous gleam over the age in which he lived, was speedily obscured; their generation was lost, and their name extinguished."†

"But," says Gibbon, "if all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not

*"And the Lord saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; but have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them: therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink."-Jeremiah ix. 13, 14, 15.

"Attila, King of the Huns, by the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, 1838."

have restored the empire of the West; and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour." Her provinces had been rent away one after another—the territory yet remaining had become like a desert; and little remained but the vain titles and symbols of sovereignty—and these too were withdrawn within thirty years after the death of Attila.

This is prefigured under the sounding of the fourth trumpet,-. "the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise."

The propriety of applying these symbols to kings and rulers of states, has already been shewn by reference to other passages of holy writ. The passage before us received a complete fulfilment in the events which took place in the western empire. In 476, Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, (one of the bands that had followed the standard of Attila), established a military authority in Italy, and resolved to abolish the useless and expensive office of Emperor of the West. The authorities bowed in submission before him, and Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor, signified his resignation. "The senate, in their own name, and that of the people, consented that the seat of universal empire should be transferred from Rome to Constantinople, and basely renounced the right of choosing their master. They humbly requested that the Emperor of the East would invest Odoacer with the title of Patrician, and the administration of the diocese of Italy." "Thus," says Elliott, "of the imperial sun the third which appertained to the western empire was eclipsed, and shone no more. In the west the night had fallen." Notwithstanding this, however, it must be borne in mind, that the authority of the Roman name had not yet entirely ceased. The Senate of Rome continued to assemble as usual. The Consuls were appointed yearly-one by the Eastern emperor, one by Italy and Rome. Odoacer himself governed Italy under the title conferred on him by the Eastern emperor. And, as regarded the more distant western provinces, or at least considerable dis

tricts of them, the tie which had united them to the Roman empire was not altogether severed. There was still a faint recognition of the supreme imperial authority. The moon and stars might seem still to shine on the west with a dim reflected light. In the course of the events, however, which rapidly followed, one after the other, in the next half century, these too were extinguished. Theodoric the Ostrogoth, on destroying the Heruli and their kingdom, ruled in Italy from the year 493 to 526 as an independent sovereign. And when Belisarius conquered the Ostrogoths, the Roman senate was dissolved, and the consulship abrogated. The independence of the barbaric princes of the western provinces became more distinctly averred and understood; and after above one hundred and fifty years of unexampled calamities, the western empire, to use a figure of St. Jerome's, became like "a trunk without a head." "About the close of the sixth century," says Gibbon, "amidst the arms of the Lombards and the despotism of the Greeks, Rome had reached the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on the ground." The same death-like condition of the empire is indicated in the 13th chapter of the Apocalypse-where it is represented under the personification of a beast having one of its heads wounded to death by a sword—YET IT LIVED. Its revival, under a new aspect, and as it were with a new head, we shall have occasion to consider hereafter-when a history and a fate will be found attaching to it, more singular and more awful than that which we have already traced.

For a while, however, the prophetic scene shifts to the eastward, and we are called upon to behold the judgments of God fulfilling there also.

The visions in which the succeeding judgments are prefigured, are introduced by forewarnings of coming woe. "I beheld," says St. John, "and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven,

saying with a loud voice, Woe, Woe, Woe, to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!" (ch. viii. 13.)

Whenever the Lord is about to bring his terrible judgments on the earth, to overthrow kingdoms and uproot powerful nations, he gives such warnings-by express declarations, or by undefined apprehensions, shadowing out the coming calamities—as cannot fail to impress the minds of men. The mission of Jonah to Nineveh is a memorable instance. Such also were the denunciations of Jeremiah previous to the first destruction of Jerusalem; and when none of the people regarded, he appealed to the land itself, exclaiming, "O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord." Before the final destruction of Jerusalem, not only did our Lord while on earth weep over the city, and warn the Jews of the coming desolation,—but he raised up a man, who for above seven years ceased not to cry day and night, "Woe! woe! unto Jerusalem." "Thus he continued his wail," says Josephus, "neither did his voice become feeble nor did he grow weary, until, during the siege, after beholding his presages verified, he ceased. For, as he was going his round on the wall, crying with a piercing voice 'Woe! woe! once more to the city, to the people, and to the temple;' when at last he had added, 'Woe! woe! to myself also,' he was struck by a stone shot from the ballista, and killed upon the spot." On this the historian remarks, "If we reflect on these events, we shall find that God exercises care over men, in every way foreshewing to their race the means of safety: but that they perish through their own folly and self-incurred evils."

So we shall find that God left not the world unwarned, during that period of time which intervened between the extinction of the old government at Rome and the rise of Mohamed and the Saracens, who effected such a remarkable change in the political and religious aspect of a great portion of the world. During this interval, of nearly fifty years,—from 565 to 610-there was a general forebod

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