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Church of Rome lays claim to this commission, and says that she has succeeded to it. However, her commission breaks down on the other side; for instead of teaching what the Lord has commanded, she teaches lies in his name, and the nations have believed in her! She teaches tradition; the mass; purgatory; the intercession of saints and angels; the immaculate conception. These are all lies which the devil has commanded. Not one of them even relates to anything which Jesus the Lord has commanded.

VIII. HIS PRESENCE.

"And, lo, I am with you alway, unto the end of the world."-Matt. xxviii, 20.

And for further encouragement, "Lo, I am with you, in the midst of you, to keep you company, always,'' all the days;' not merely continually, but without one day's interruption (ráσas ràs pépas) even to the end of the world "-to His second coming-- for this is the force of the words, and such is the blessed promise of our Lord Jesus-a promise which holds good to all His real servants to this day! "For what if some did not believe," says St. Paul, "shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid." (Rom iii. 3.) And where is there a true missionary in the whole world that has not proved it?

In the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Lord's presence is guaranteed under two conditions.

One is in Chap. xviii., when the Lord speaks of two or three gathered together in His name. There am I in the midst of them." Christians can, therefore, always have recourse to this, and find the power and blessedness of it at all times.

It refers back to the promise of the Lord when speaking of Israel scattered amongst the nations, and the temple gone. He says, "although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in all the countries where they shall come." (Ezek. xi. 16). Therefore, this may be called His presence guaranteed to worship. The other, His presence guaranteed to missions. In the one case He says, "Where two or three are gathered," &c., "there am I," &c. In the other case he says, "Lo, I am with you all the days to the end of the world." Both remain in spirit and power to the end. But we have seen above that this commission will yet be carried out in all the fulness of exact prophecy when the nation of Israel is again called in, and when the Lord will send those that escaped of them to the nations that are far off. (Isa. lxvi, 19.) Then the Lord will lift up the light. of his countenance upon the Jew, and His saving health shall be known among all nations. (Ps. lxvii. 1, 2.) "He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root, Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. (Isa. xxvii, 6.)

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THOUGHTS ON REVELATION XVII.

BY REV. RICHARD CHESTER.

Ir will, I presume, be admitted by all interpreters of prophecy that the seventeenth chapter of Revelation occupies a position of peculiar prominence, and that a right understanding of it will help us much towards a knowledge of preceding and subsequent portions of that wonderful book. In it we are furnished with such distinctive and characteristic marks both of the woman and the beast of Apocalyptic vision as the Spirit of God has seen it needful to supply in order to their full identification. These being amongst the principal, if not themselves the principal, personages in the book (the Lord himself, of course excepted), clear, definite views, if such can be obtained, with respect to them, must be of the utmost importance towards a correct interpretation of the entire.

I shall, therefore, ask the reader's attention while I endeavour to bring out, and to put together, what is here revealed concerning these two remarkable symbolical personages, the woman and the beast, with the marks of identification assigned to each, taking Scripture for our guide.

The subject of the vision of chapter xvii. is "The judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters," verse 1. It is this judg ment that causes the chapter to occupy a place in the third division of the book of Revelation, "the things that shall be hereafter," after the church period or dispensation, as presented in the seven epistles to the seven churches, shall have come to an end. (See Rev. i. 19, and compare iv. 1.) This position of the chapter does not at all require, as some have concluded, that the woman and the beast should belong altogether to "the things that shall be hereafter"-should as yet have no actual existence. Such an opinion is not only contrary to the express teaching of the Scripture elsewhere, as also to plain, positive matter of fact, but also to the manifest import of chapter xvii. itself. The judgment which (and the instrumentality whereby it is to be effected) it is the main object of the vision to reveal is without doubt still future; but the woman upon whom the judgment falls, who has previously "made the inhabitants of the earth drunk with the wine of her fornication" (verse 2), and the beast by whose adherents the judgment is instrumentally accomplished, and "five of whose seven heads had fallen" previous to the time denoted in the vision (verse 10), must needs have, and as we learn both from other portions of Scripture, and from indisputable matters of fact, actually have, existed long before. They have had a place in the second division of the book, among "the things that are"-the things of the present church dispensation. Who then is the woman? We have not far to look for the interpretation of this symbol. We read, verse 18: "The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth." Not which shall reign at the yet future time to which the vision refers, but which was reigning at the time at which the angel spoke. This is evident from the manner in which tenses are used by

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the interpreting angel throughout. He does not employ them, as is not unfrequent in prophetic language, speaking of things future as though they were present, but with close, and in such an interpretation, unavoidable attention to their ordinary grammatical signification. For instance, in verse 10, "Five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come."

The great city which reigned over the kings of the earth when the angel spoke was Rome. The city of Rome is, therefore, the woman of Revelation xvii. Further, as if to put this altogether beyond question, we read, verse 9, of the woman 'sitting on seven mountains."

But the woman is, moreover, a great harlot." The import of this expression every reader of the Old Testament is aware of. It denotes apostacy from God. Thus Isaiah i. 21, speaking of Jerusalem, "How is the faithful city become a harlot; it was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers." A woman is originally and properly the symbol of a church, the spouse of Jehovah. The symbol is only applied to a city as being the habitation, or chief locality, or metropolis of a church. Thus, Rev. xxi., the new Jerusalem is spoken of as "the bride, the Lamb's wife," being the habitation of the glorified church, and identified with her as her habitation. Even so Jerusalem of old is spoken of in Old Testament prophecy as a woman being identified with the Jewish church; a faithful woman while the Jewish church continued faithful to God-a harlot when that church apostatised.

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The city in Revelation xvii., the seat of a once faithful church (a church whose faith was once "spoken of throughout the whole world" Rom. i. 8), is in like manner a woman," and becomes " a harlot" by the fearful apostacy of the inhabiting and identified church. It seems strange that with such a combination of plain scriptural and historical matters of fact before them any persons can question that Rome is the city here intended, and look for the rise of ancient Babylon as needful to the fulfilment of this prediction.

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The city of Rev. xvii. is, it is true, called Babylon, but it is so called mystically not literally (verse 5), even as Jerusalem is in chapter xi. 8 called, "spiritually, Sodom and Egypt." So also is the name of Jerusalem given, chapter xxi., not to the literal city which we now know and call by that name, but to a city that is yet to come down from God out of heaven." It is very easy to understand why the name of Babylon should thus be applied to Rome. She occupies the same position as metropolis of the last great Gentile monarchy which Babylon of old occupied with regard to the first. She has been, and it would appear will be again at the time to which the vision specially refers, what ancient Babylon was, the relentless persecutor of God's people. She has possessed at all times striking features of moral identity with ancient Babylon in idolatry, pride, luxuriousness, and abominable iniquity. This last is manifestly the special reason why Jerusalem in like manner is in the Apocalypse spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.

The next question, and one of paramount importance, is, Who is the beast of this vision? He comes before us as, in the first place, occupying to the woman the relationship of the steed to the rider; that is, a relationship, of submission to the guidance and authority of the woman

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similar to that which the horse is under to his rider, and a giving of assistance and support to the woman such as the beast of burden gives to one who sits upon his back. This double relationship it is well to keep in mind as we proceed with the interpretation of the vision. It is also essential to remember that this relationship becomes altogether changed at the time to which the vision specially refers, to one of hatred and destruction, as though the rider, previously supported and submitted to, were to be ultimately thrown and trampled by the steed. Who then is the beast?

Taking his ten horus as an indisputable mark of identity, we are carried back to Daniel's vision of the four empires of the Gentile sovereignty upon the earth, symbolised by four beasts, as we find them. in chapter vii. The fourth of these, unmistakably identified with the beast of the passage before us by his ten horns, is by universal consent admitted to be the Roman Empire. To the question, then, who is the ten-horned beast of Rev. xvii., a comparison of Scripture with Scripture enables us unhesitatingly to reply, the Roman Empire. This answer, it is worthy of note, remarkably accords with and confirms our reply to the previous question concerning the woman. The city governing and upheld by the fourth or Roman Empire (as Babylon was by the first, or Babylonian Empire) must needs be not Babylon, but Rome.

The beast of the vision before us has, however, other characteristic marks besides the ten horns (his chief distinction in Daniel). This vision must, therefore, be regarded as more special than that of Daniel, and pointing to a more definite period of time. He has here seven heads as well as ten horns. He thus becomes further identified with "the dragon" who is seen in heaven (chapter xii. 3), having "seven heads and ten horns." But the dragon is "Satan" (chapter xii. 9). We are thus taught that at the time to which the vision of chapter xvii. refers, the Roman Empire will be Satan's chief instrument for evil; the agent in which he will concentrate his mighty power for the exercise of his great, but short-lived, wrath upon the earth; and with which, therefore, he will for the time be specially identified, and it with him in the wearing out and persecuting of the saints of the most High (xii. 13-17; xiii. 7). He is, moreover, identified by his seven heads and ten horns with the beast seen to rise out of the sea (chapter xiii. 1). Thus his identity with the fourth, or Roman Empire, the beast of Daniel's vision, is rendered more complete. In chapter xiii., verse 2, we read: "The beast which I saw was like unto a leopard" (the symbol in Daniel vii. of the preceding Grecian Empire), "and his feet were as the feet of a bear" (the symbol in like manner of the preceding Medo-Persian Empire), "and his mouth as the mouth of a lion" (the symbol of the first or Babylonian Empire). Thus is he presented as at one "diverse" from each of the preceding beasts or empires of Daniel (Daniel vii. 7), yet combining all their characteristics; perpetuating them, and representing them as their successor, even as we know that the fourth, or Roman Empire, has done.

They repre

But what are we to understand by the seven heads? sent, as we have already seen, and as is expressly affirmed (verse 9), seven hills or mountains on which "the woman sitteth," putting it, one might suppose, beyond question that the woman is the seven-hilled city of Rome. They also represent "seven kings" (verse 10), which

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would be more correctly rendered "and are" (i.e., the seven heads of the preceding verse are, or represent) "seven kings." That is, they represent either seven individual kings, or seven kingdoms, or sovereignties, or forms of government; for that such is the sense in which "kings" may be understood we learn from Daniel vii. 17, where we read, "These great beasts, which are four, are four "kings ;" while in verse 23 we read, "the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom." Again, in Daniel viii., we find horns used as denoting interchangeably kings and kingdoms. Whether, therefore, we are to understand individual kings, or sovereignties, or forms of government, by the seven heads upon the beast is a question to be determined by collateral evidence. It would seem, then, that these heads cannot denote individual kings, inasmuch as the ten horns have beyond doubt this very signification (verses 12, 13). But that horns and the heads out of which they spring should in the same vision and upon the same beast symbolize one and the same thing would be altogether incongruous. If the object of the vision had been to represent seventeen individual kings in connexion with the beast, surely the mode of so doing would have been either seventeen heads or seventeen horns. But it may be said the seven kings represented by the seven heads are successional, while the ten kings represented by the ten horns are contemporaneous, and hence the difference of symbol. Such a difference, however, would not, I venture to submit, have been requisite were this the only distinction between the powers represented by the heads and the horns. In such case the unity of the symbol would have required either seventeen heads or seventeen horns upon the beast; the angel, in his interpretation, merely explaining that seven of the kings whom they represented were to be successional and ten contemporaneous, as he has actually done with regard to the seven heads and ten horns.

If we suppose the seven heads to represent powers, whether of individuals or of forms of government, successively ruling over the whole Roman Empire, the ten horns to represent powers ruling contemporaneously over its divided parts, have we not an interpretation in more manifest accordance with the nature of the symbol? If so, however, the question unavoidably suggests itself, Where are five, and but five, individuals fallen at the time at which the angel spoke, and who had ruled successively over the beast, or entire Roman Empire, to be found? History emphatically answers, nowhere! Some commentators, it is true, have striven to make out five fallen historical personages of sufficient note and name to constitute the fallen heads of the symbol. The selection of such, however, seems of necessity to have been altogether arbitrary, some going back to Nimrod as the first head, others beginning with Nebuchadnezzar, all apparently leaving out some who have as strong a claim to be included as those whom they adduce, and including some whose title to inclusion, either as regards sufficiency of importance or of actual connexion with the fourth beast, or ten-horned Roman Empire, it would not be easy to establish. If, moreover, the seven heads be individuals of whom five had fallen and one was in existence at the time of the vision, that one must needs have been the Emperor Domitian, by whom John was banished to Patmos, and in whose reign the vision was beheld. But does Domitian occupy a position of sufficient prominence amongst the Roman emperors to be