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Then, in the next place, the Seventh Vial, the last apocalyptic symbol of the judgments of God on earth, will be poured into the air. We read : "And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent. Now mark, this seventh vial was filled with the last plague; the word "plague" comes from the Greek rλŋyń, a stroke, and means pestilence and calamity of every sort. This last vial being poured into the air denotes the universality of its influence, whatever that influence may be. It will reach the loftiest throne; it will descend to the hovels of the poorest cotter, and make itself so felt that its sprinklings will be unmistakeable as the last terrible baptism of our world. Now, all these vials have a literal as well as a moral significance. The prophecy of a "star from the East," denoted figuratively the Messiah; but when Jesus was born, a literal star appeared. So this vial has

its physical and its moral meaning. This vial let fall its first sprinklings, I believe, in 1848; and its influence still spreads. From that day to this it has been on the fruits of the earth; from the vines of France, Spain, and Madeira, to the potato of Ireland —a universal and destructive blight. Where is its birth-place? Medical men tell you, in the air. In vain chemists analyse it; in vain microscopes are applied; in vain is it assigned to a peculiarity of soil, season, climate, insects. The only ultimate explanation is the apocalyptic taint, the contents of the angel's vial vitiating the air, the source of life and nutriment, with its terrible and poisonous miasma. The physical proof of the action of the seventh vial is thus complete. But its effects are not confined to vegetable life. Cholera, a new and devastating pestilence existing like other diseases since the fall, but first seen here in 1832, as a premonition, came down upon England in 1849; and ere it ceased, I recollect-for I was in the midst of it-three thousand per week were gathered to their graves. No theory explains this; no medical skill has penetrated its secret. Poverty, filth, bad drainage, crowded hovels, long hours in unventilated shops, do not create it; but they draw it down as iron conductors draw down the lightning; and then they nurse, and feed, and strengthen it, till it goes forth from the hovels of the poor to the halls of the great, conquering and to conquer, with terrible and disastrous success. It is a taint in the air, a poison of universal presence. It is diluted at present, and has been diluted since

1849, but it is not spent; it has come back with concentrated force in 1853; and I expect -and the expectation suggests prayer, as the pious man says; and sanitary movement, as the worldly man also rightly says-while I earnestly pray my expectation may be proved erroneous that it will make 1854 one of the most deadly and fatal periods in the roll of the years of our country, written with weeping, and lamentation, and woe. I look at cholera less as the gift of God-more as a retribution for the sins and misdoings of mankind. We should learn to see God in the sunshine as well as in the cloud. After cholera has struck down twenty or thirty in St. Giles's, it acquires strength, and visits Belgrave-square; and we are grateful to God that it is so. It serves to teach the rich occupants, that the sun would shine as brightly on their mansions, if the shadows did not fall on such hovels near them—no class of society must insulate itself, or it must suffer. That poor ragged child in St. Giles's, mother, is thy child. That poor widow, in misery, wretchedness and hunger, lady of rank and title, is thy sister. Do you say, Am I my sister's keeper? Am I my brother's keeper? Cain's curse will be branded on your brow, and Cain's doom and wretchedness will necessarily be yours. Medical men state, that during the last five or six years disease is less tractable than formerly, and that trivial ailments are more apt to end in fatal diseases. Earth by its sufferings thus responds to the word of God.

Facts of universal occurrence, phenomena startling the wide world, seem to assure us that this vial has been poured into the air, and that we are near the winding up of the age.

There was to be under this vial a great earthquake. I believe this, if of literal import, is yet to come; but that part of the Lord's prophecy of earthquakes in divers places has been literally fulfilled.* In England and on the Continent there have been several premonitory convulsions; and in distant countries whole cities have been engulfed during the year that is passed, and thousands of their inhabitants buried in the bowels of the earth; as if to show that the expansive gaseous forces are mustering their elements and giving instances of their force preparatory to the tremendous shock which rends the earth, upheaves capitals, and with a voice which shall sound in the depths of men's hearts, as if the hour of doom were approaching, proclaim an epochal hour. Every day I expect to hear the rending of the earth's crust, and the outburst of its subterranean, long pent-up elements, and with this a moral convulsion-for such an earthquake means in prophecy-that will shake society to its centre. It is absurd in wiseacres to answer, this is impossible. It is predicted. It is certain. All you can fairly question or dispute is the time, not the fact. If you will look at the daily papers of 1848, and read the descriptions

* While this is passing through the press, The Times calls attention to a terrible earthquake in Calabria.

they gave of the French Revolution that broke out in that year, the first throe of the earthquake as a moral convulsion, you will find that they commonly employ the word "earthquake,"-" that unprecedented earthquake;" and, singularly enough, the language of the Apocalypse (it may be, never read by those who wrote these accounts) is their favourite figure: "that great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth." Believers in prophecy, and those who laugh at all revelation, are equally expectant of new and startling occurOne heave of this predicted convulsion has thrown down the walls of China, and revealed the sublime spectacle of some hundred millions of people emerging into the grey dawn of everlasting light.

rences.

Under this Seventh Vial, also, there is to be a great fall of hailstones, which seems to indicate an invasion from the north. The leading great hailstone is, in all probability, the Czar or Autocrat of all the Russias. That gigantic empire seems, from the slight and incidental reference to it in prophecy, destined to send down into the west and south of Europe, especially the Papal States, an overwhelming deluge of savage barbarians, as God's judgment on the guilty nations of Europe, leaving what was a paradise before, as a desert and wilderness of desolation behind. These awful events are gathering in the distant horizon. The stormy East will soon startle the quiet West, and the treasures of hail accumulating for years shall sweep society itself

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