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the distinct but successive periods of history, which were exhibited to the Apostle in the prophetic panorama, refer not to changes in the world at large, but only to that portion of it which embraced the Church, or what is usually termed Christendom; because it is only in and through the Church that God's purposes of love and mercy will be accomplished.

As the Old Testament prophecies refer to the Jewish Church, and only to other nations as subordinate to it-as they happened to be employed for the punishment or the assistance of the Israelitish nation, so we find this to be the case also in the Apocalypse. The people of God, really or professedly, constituting the Christian Church, occupy the chief attention of the Spirit of prophecy; other nations are referred to, and some are occasionally introduced, asemployed by God for the overthrow of his enemies, or the punishment of apostasy. Such were the Goths, Vandals, and Huns, who destroyed, as we have seen, the Roman empire in the West, and were afterwards absorbed into the outward Church of God. Such are also the Saracenic or Turkish nations, who were employed to punish, and eventually to overturn the Eastern empire, and whose appointed mission is prefigured in the visions seen by St. John, on the sounding of the fifth and sixth trumpets. But these nations, and all others existing on the earth, are referred to, and will be concerned in the grand catastrophe, when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ: "For He shall reign where'er the sun

Doth his successive journeys run,”

Chapter IX. "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power." (ver. 1-3.)

In this remarkable vision, John sees a star fall from heaven

the bottomless pit opened-smoke ascending from it-and locusts issuing out of the smoke. A STAR is the usual symbol in the prophetical writings for a chief or ruler-whether civil or ecclesiastical,

-as has already been shewn when speaking of the darkening of the moon and stars under the fourth trumpet-vision; and in the first chapter, where the "angels of the churches" are called stars. Angels of heaven are also referred to under the same figure, in the well-known passage-"the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." And St. Jude calls the teachers of false and corrupt doctrine, "wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."

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To such a star, "fallen from heaven to earth," was given the KEY of the bottomless pit." A key is the symbol of power and authority. The prophet Isaiah (xxii. 22), says of Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah," the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open and none shall shut, and he shall shut and none shall open." And a greater than Eliakim says of himself, "I have the keys of hell and of death." The key of the bottomless pit, or of hell, is represented in the twentieth chapter, as delegated to an angel, who binds Satan in that prison for a thousand years. And Jesus delegated to the Apostles (Matt. xvi. 19) and to Peter by name, as the spokesman for the rest, the "keys of the kingdom of heaven," that they might bind and loose on earth: that is, the Apostles received power to teach and preach, and make laws for the government of the Church. Thus Peter, with his key, opened the door of the Church to the Gentiles, when he baptized Cornelius. So also the Apostles, by the same power, loosed the believers from the yoke of circumcision and the law; but bound them to "abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood." And by the Apostolic Epistles, the Church is bound to the end of time. The power of the keys, is therefore equivalent to "teaching with authority;" which pre-eminently distinguished our Lord's own ministry while on earth. He uses the same figure when denouncing the Jewish teachers, who had made the commandments of God of none effect (or powerless) by their traditions--teaching for doctrines the com

mandments of men. "Woe unto you, ye lawyers, ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye enter not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."

To this star in the Apocalypse, this ruler or teacher, is given power to open the bottomless pit. The place of punishment—the abode of fallen spirits-the head-quarters of Satan-is here referred to:-that fearful place into which Korah and his company went down quick-where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. When it was opened, the SMOKE from it is represented as ascending like the smoke of a great furnace, and darkening the sun and the air.

What are we to understand by the SMOKE? Jesus represents himself as the light-the true light from heaven, which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. He is declared to be the Sun of Righteousness. His DOCTRINE was as the light,—shining into man's heart, and exhibiting the brightness of the Father's glory. The object of Satan is to obscure this glory; to darken the light that shines on the path to heaven; to raise a cloud between man and his Maker, by substituting something of his own in the place of simple obedience to the commands of God. In this he has been but too successful: from the day when he said to Eve in Paradise, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," to the day when he taught in England the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration.

False doctrines, therefore, emanating from Satan, obscuring the light of the Sun of Righteousness, and darkening the moral atmosphere-the mind and conscience of man,—we may conclude to be the true meaning of this "smoke out of the pit," in the vision before us. And history fully justifies this opinion: for, not many years after the destruction of the Western empire,-which (as we have seen) was prefigured by the previous trumpet-vision—MOHAMED, the great teacher of false doctrine in the East, made his appear

ance.

It was the commencement of the first Woe, announced by the flying angel.

Much learning has been expended in proving that Mohamed was a fallen star, in a political point of view : having been deprived,

on the death of his grandfather, of the chieftainship and authority to which by birth he was entitled; and also of the office of guardian of the Caaba, or holy place of his pagan ancestors. He was reduced to poverty; and, as servant to the widow Cadijah, he traded in the fairs of Damascus. In social life, therefore, he might with propriety be called a fallen star. But it is in his character of teacher, or prophet, that I think he was especially prefigured as a star fallen from heaven. The great object of his teaching was not to point out to men the way to heaven, but to obtain power and authority for himself on earth. His doctrines tend to foster the evil passions of men, instead of restraining them; and he promised heaven itself to prayers, to courage, to ferocity, to ambitious daring, rather than to meekness and mercy, to poverty of spirit and purity of heart. He proclaimed himself a prophet sent from God, but his teaching was earthly and sensual; he pretended to have received his commission from heaven, but, to use the remarkable words of one of his own followers, "he was an emissary from the armies of Satan."

In the secret cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, says Gibbon, Mohamed consulted, year by year, "the spirit of fraud or of enthusiasm, whose abode was not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet." This cave has suggested itself to interpreters as the mouth of the pit of the abyss, whence the pestilential fumes and darkness were seen to arise. At length he began to declare his mission, first privately, and three years afterward publicly. For a while the elders of the city affected to despise the presumption of the aspiring prophet; but eventually they chased him from Mecca. His flight marks the Era of the Hegira. (The year of our Lord 622.) Mohamed took refuge in the city of Medina, where his doctrines were more favourably received. "The injustice of Mecca, (says Gibbon), and the choice of Medina, transformed the citizen into a prince, and the humble preacher into the leaders of armies." After an exile of seven years, he returned to Mecca; where, adds the historian, "the fugitive missionary was installed as the prince and the prophet of his native country." Thenceforward he propagated his doctrines at the point of the sword, and inspired his

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followers with the most invincible courage and the most undaunted resolution, by proclaiming heaven, with all its voluptuous enjoyments as the immediate reward of those who fell in battle; while the flames of hell were reserved for the fainthearted and the coward. Tribe after tribe joined his standard, till the whole of Arabia acknowledged his sway. He then sent his armies against the Eastern Roman empire-subjugated Syria and Egypt, and extended his conquests over the greater part of Africa and the East. The religion he thus founded by the power of the sword has been permanent as its influence was extensive: and after an existence of above 1200 years, Mohamedanism is still professed by 100 millions of the human race. But the Mussulmans themselves believe that the Cross will finally prevail above the Crescent :and traditions are current throughout the East, that the expiration of their power and their religion is at hand.

Thus, as the vision had foreshewn, power, indicated by the key, was given to the fallen star. His authority was firmly established, and his doctrines struck deep root into the earth.

In the Koran the key of God is asserted to have been given to Mohamed to open to believers the portals of the true religion and of heaven; and in another passage it is said, "God gave his legate the power of heaven which is above, and of the fire beneath: with the key did not he give him the title and power of a porter that he may open to those whom he hath chosen.” Hence the KEY was selected by his followers subsequently, both as a religious and a national emblem.

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The promulgation and permanency of Mohamedanism is one of those mysterious facts which puzzle our limited understanding. "If this doctrine be of men," said Gamaliel, when the Apostles first preached the Gospel, "it will come to nought, but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found to fight against God." We know the invincibility of the Gospel, and accept Gamaliel's

"The sword (says Mohamed) is the key of heaven and of hell.”—Gibbon, ch. 50.

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