The Book of Revelation may be said to consist - with the exception of Revelation 2 and 3 - of a vast picture gallery. And this not so much because of the number of the pictures, as their sublimity and extent. Revelation 1. is the portraiture of "the Son of man." Then there is a vast canvas, stretching from Revelation 4 to 11, and representing the judgment and fall of Jerusalem. Then from Revelation 12 to 19 another similar one, representing the judgment and fall of Rome. Then yet another, much smaller, representing the final conflict and overthrow of the enemies of Christ; and then, the last and most precious of all, in Revelation 21. and 22., the glowing picture of the new Jerusalem, the saints' eternal home. Now, in looking at a great picture we need to study it carefully, closely, continuously, and portion by portion. We have tried to do so in regard to the first of these, and also in regard to two most important sections of the second one. In this vast second scene we have viewed the high court of heaven, and the inauguration of Christ's mediatorial reign, which was the subject of Revelation 5. And now we come to another most interesting but unquestionably difficult part of the same great subject - the opening of the seals. Indeed, the interpretation of this book, from the beginning of this chapter onwards, is one concerning which the only certain thing is that absolute certainty concerning any given interpretation is unattainable. It matters little, however, for the profitable reading of the book, that there is and must be this uncertainty as to the actual meaning of the many mysterious symbols with which it abounds; for whether we regard them as telling of the history of the Church in its relation to the world continuously to the end of time; or whether, as surely is the more reasonable way, we take them as telling of those tremendous events which, when St. John wrote, had begun, and were shortly to come to pass, the time being at hand, and by which the Church of Christ was so much affected, - whichever way we read these symbols, their main lessons for us and for the Church in all ages is one and the same; and these, by patient, prayerful study, we may hope to learn. As to this Revelation 6., the sheet anchor for its interpretation is our Lord's discourse in Matthew 24. and its parallel in Mark. No doubt that discourse, as this book, looks on to the times of the end; but as surely it contemplated, as does this book also, events which many of them - not all - were nigh at hand. God's judgment on Judaism and the Jews is its near subject, as the same is of the vision of which this chapter forms a part. And now let us look at -

I. THE SIX SEALS TOGETHER, or rather, at what is disclosed by the opening of them all. And, without doubt, terror is their one badge and mark. The four horses with their riders all tell of terrible things. The souls under the altar, whom we see at the opening of the fifth, cry for vengeance on their murderers, and all horrors seem accumulated in one at the opening of the sixth. The reading of the chapter makes one's heart tremble; our flesh shudders with fear at the visions of distress which, one after the other, are unfolded. There is a seventh and a very different vision at the seventh seal; but the opening of that will not be for a long while, and therefore we first consider these six which are near in time and in character also. And whether we read the pages of Josephus, or whether we regard Gibbon as furnishing the more accurate explanation of these symbols, - in either there will be found more than enough to warrant all that St. John has here portrayed. The dreadful days of the fall of Jerusalem were drawing on, and none who know the history of the horrors that preceded and accompanied that event can question that they were more than enough to fill up all that these vivid and terrible symbols import. Our Lord says of those days that "except they should be shortened, there should no flesh he saved." And yet - and here is the marvel - it is "the Lamb," he who is the Ideal of all grace and love, he it is who presides over, directs, and governs all these events, dreadful as they are. And then the highest, the holiest, and most beloved of his ministers, they who cluster closest round the throne of God and the Lamb, appeal to him and pray him to "Come." At the opening of each of the first four seals one of the four living ones thus appeals to Christ. It is evident, therefore, that they are in full sympathy with him in this matter, and would not have him do otherwise. And it is the same with the whole of that high court of heaven. There must be, then, in all these and in all such things - and this is their lesson for us - a force for the furtherance of God's blessed will amongst men such as less stern methods could not have. True, in one aspect it is all the result of man's wild wickedness and folly.

"Man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,...
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep."

(Measure for Measure.') And to many minds, when you have recited the different events that led on, one by one, to the final catastrophe, you have sufficiently explained the whole; there is no need to bring God, as St. John does, into the matter. But we are distinctly taught that all these things are the working of his will, the carrying out of his high plans and purposes. They are not by chance, nor by the will of man, but of God. And accepting this as true, we are led to the inquiry - Wherefore uses he such means? Various answers may be suggested: so only can the proud, unruly wills of sinful men be humbled; so only can the Church be roused and stimulated to do her proper work; so only can her faith be disciplined, tried, and developed; so only can men be made to know, "Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth;" and so only can gigantic obstacles to men's good and the extension of Christ's kingdom be got out of the way. All history shows this. But whilst this and far more may be said, it yet remains for us to remember, and that with gratitude, that dark, drear, dreadful, desolating as such events are, and diabolical as are many of the men who are the chief actors in them they yet, all of them; are under the absolute control of him whose love and wisdom and power enable him to know unerringly when to let such events run riot in their rage, and when to restrain them or remove them altogether. And what is best he is sure to do; and always he will make them "work together for good."

II. THE OPENING OF THE FIRST SEAL. (Ver. 2.) The vision of the white horse and its rider bearing a bow, with its sharp arrows ready for conflict, and wearing a crown, the emblem of victory. In Zechariah 1:7-11; Zechariah 6:1-8; Habakkuk 3:8, 9; Isaiah 41:2; Psalm 45:4, 5; we have similar representations of the horseman told of here, and his identity seems settled by Revelation 19:11-16, where he is distinctly called "the Word of God." When the first seal was broken, then there passed across the stage, as it were, this vision. But of whom else can we think as corresponding to the rider of the white horse, than of him of whom we read in Psalm 45., "In thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows shall be sharp in the heart of the king's enemies; whereby the people fall under thee"? Of the Lord Jesus Christ going forth conquering and to conquer, in spite of, in the midst of, and by means of, all the dread events which are afterwards declared - of him we believe the vision tells. Not of any ordinary human warfare; still less of the prosperous condition of the Roman empire under the Antonines; but of Christ our Lord. And most cheering is it to be taught that, let come what will, however calamitous and distressful the events of life, nothing can stay his course. They cannot bar his way, but will be made by him to further that way. This first vision is, therefore, full of good cheer. And let it not be forgotten that the vision has an individual application as well as a world wide one. It tells every believing soul, "Christ will overrule all that happens; thy trials and crosses, thy disappointments and disasters, shall not hinder his purposes of good for thee. He goeth forth 'conquering and to conquer,' and who can turn him aside?"

III. THE OPENING OF THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH SEALS. These give the visions of the red, the black, and the pale horses. Cruel war, black famine, and all-devouring death, by pestilence probably, are meant by these visions. And more summarily and distinctly they are foretold by our Lord. "Wars and rumours of wars," "famines and pestilences," - these with other woes he plainly predicts; and his meaning is, we are sure, the meaning of St. John. Famine and pestilence were the common accompaniments of war. But they are not to have unrestrained power. For as in the discourse of our Lord, so here in the vision of St. John, there are plain suggestions that in wrath God remembered mercy. The voice that proclaimed the nearly twelve times enhanced cost of wheat and barley, tells - as does also the blackness of the horse which suggests the black lips, the sign of extreme hunger - of dreadful famine. But that same voice tells also of distress mitigated, not suffered to become utter destitution. This is the meaning of the added charge, "See that thou hurt not the oil and the wine." It is a difficult saying, but coupling it with the express words of our Lord that "for the elects' sake" these dreadful days should "be shortened," we take them as telling that, whilst owing to the ravages of war there should be, as there could not but be, great scarcity in those things which, as corn and barley, depended upon constant cultivation; yet the olive and the vine should still yield their increase, they not requiring to be replanted year by year, and being in various ways likely to be less affected than the level corn lands which lay along the plains, and which therefore became the common camps and fighting grounds of hostile armies, to the utter destruction of all things grown thereon. Moreover, that to death and Hades were given power, not over all the earth, but over only one-fourth part, this seems also to point to the same blessed truth that the instruments of God's judgment are held in and not allowed to do their work a hairbreadth beyond their appointed limit. "He does not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men," though, as these visions do plainly tell, he will ruthlessly both afflict and grieve when man's sin and folly make it needful that he should. As a loving mother will hold down her own dearly loved child to the surgeon's dreadful knife, if only so it can be saved from death, so will the Lord, the Lamb of God, pour out upon us of his awful judgments, if by our sin we force him thereto. As we read of these visions, this should be our prayer that never may we thus force him to deal in such manner with us. May his love constrain us, never our sin constrain him.

IV. THE OPENING OF THE FIFTH SEAL. Here no living creature cries: "Come," but the appeal comes from the martyred saints themselves. We have had no mention of an "altar" before, but now it is seen as part of the vision which untolded itself before St. John. "They shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you" - so had our Lord foretold, and here the actual fulfilment of that word is symbolized. Not to the martyrs under Diocletian, yet less to those under papal Rome, but to those who were, in St. John's own day, fast falling beneath the persecutor's sword, does this vision specially belong. Nevertheless, it is designed for the consolation and support of all Christ's persecuted people in every age and in every land. Hence Milton, with all possible appropriateness, sang concerning the martyrs of the Alpine mountains, whose sufferings righteously roused the rage of their fellow believers here in England —

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their means

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe." But this vision tells not alone of martyrdoms, but of the righteousness of God in the avenging of their blood upon the earth. We see it is just and what ought to be. Yet more are we shown that "the Lord is mindful of his own." See the condition of these martyred ones. Not yet perfect or complete, but nevertheless, oh, how blessed! At rest, in victory, sanctity, joy - so their white robes tell, and expecting some even yet better thing in the triumph of Christ and his Church over all evil which in due time shall surely come to pass. What comfort there would be and is in all this, in regard to those who had suffered death! Those who mourned them would know now that blessed indeed are the dead which die in the Lord. And in regard to the mystery of a persecuted Church, would it not teach them that though

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt false systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own"? And when they came to face such death themselves, oh, how would this vision help them, as in fact it did, to be faithful unto death, and to face it unflinchingly, unfalteringly, as Christ would have them do.

V. THE OPENING OF THE SIXTH SEAL. (Vers. 12-17.) Nearly every detail of this dread event is given by our Lord (Matthew 24.). And St. John's language is modelled largely on that of the older prophets (Joel 2:30, 31; Isaiah 50:3; Isaiah 34:3, 4; Isaiah 2:12, 19; Hosea 10:8; Jeremiah 4:23-26). And in the great catastrophe by which Judaism was overthrown, and in the fall of Rome, and in the events which usher in the last great and terrible day of the Lord, have been and shall be seen the fulfilment of this awful vision. There is that which is called "the wrath of the Lamb"! Not Scripture alone, but historic fact alike declare this. And it will be poured out on the ungodly when the Lord shall come again. How will that day find us? Confident, or ashamed and dismayed? The answer may be known. How does Christ find us now? Trusting and obeying him, or disregarding and disobeying? As now, so then.

"Lord, in this thy mercy's day,
Ere it pass for e'er away,
On our knees we'll fall and pray,
Have mercy, Lord!" S.C.

It is generally thought that none but the penitent really pray. And yet the day is coming when even impenitent people will throng together and hold a prayer meeting, and perhaps the most intensely earnest one ever upon record. Notice the time. It is future. It will be after the day of grace has passed, after the privilege for Christian prayer has ceased, and after human probation has been completed. Yes, when the righteous have ceased to pray, and are changing prayers on earth to praises in heaven, the impenitent will begin to pray as if they thought of it for the first time in their lives. It will be when Divine judgments are falling upon the earth. Where? In their homes? No, those prayerless houses will be shaking into ruins by an earthquake. In the churches? The day for churches will be gone. Why did they not hasten to them in the time of mercy? They will meet in the dens and caves, and among the rocks of the mountains. Who will be there? In ages when God's children were hunted down by foes, chiefly the lowly, the poor, met in such difficult retreats, but to this last prayer meeting kings will run, noblemen will hasten, courtiers and statesmen will speed, rich men and great captains will rush, and all who thought they could trust in the permanence of earthly things. No real Christians will be there. Mere professors and pretenders, deceived in heart or deceiving the very elect, and prayerless in their lives, may be expected; and when there they will contribute their part for the first time to the interest of a meeting, for they will pray voluntarily and with an earnestness they never knew before. What are to be the exercises, the services? No reading of the Word of God. None in that assembly will wish to hear it read or explained. They disowned it once, they dislike it still, for it must expose their sins and neglects. No preaching, because the day for that has passed. No psalms nor spiritual songs. To what will they pray? Not to God. At sea, when the tempest is raging, and all human control of the ship is lost, when the masts are torn away and the next wave that sweeps the deck may bury the company in the deep, the passengers and crew lift their entreaties, not to the storm, not to the waves, but to God, their only resort and refuge. But the prayer at this last meeting is not to God, nor is it to men. In their fears they call upon the mountains. Unwilling to call upon God in the day of prosperity, and disliking to have friends pray for them, their aversion clings to them as a fixed habit, and they are still determined not to cry unto the Lord. Nothing could once persuade them to do it, and now nothing can force them, for the human will is not converted by force, Rather than submit to God's way, they call upon everything else, idolising the deaf rocks and the dead mountains. These are their gods. Can anything else so portray impenitence and stubbornness of will? And why such a prayer for destruction? There are three reasons here given.

I. THEIR DREAD OF SEEING THE FACE OF GOD. Once that face was radiant with mercy. They might have been forgiven, but they would not seek His pardon. Oh, the lost opportunities, the rejected mercies! All gone for ever. They cannot bear the sight of Him whose offers of grace they so wilfully refused, and they ask the rocks to confer on them a merciless burial.

II. A FEAR OF THE JUSTICE OF CHRIST. Once He was the Lamb of sacrifice, the atoning Redeemer, the entreating Saviour, ready to save all that would call upon Him for salvation. But they would not call. Their day of redemption is past, and Christ is coming as their Judge. They see punishment awaiting them, and perdition before them as the just desert of their treatment of Christ.

III. THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE. There is for them no apology, no availing plea, no justification, no righteousness, no hope of future grace.

(W. M. Blackburn, D. D.)

The first thing that strikes us about it is that this last great prayer meeting will be attended by a vaster assemblage of human beings than it is even possible for us to conceive. Every grade of society has its representative there — men and women, young and old, the child and the hoary-headed, the lofty and the mean. They have come from every land. In a strange unity of woe the attendants at this last great prayer meeting are to be gathered together into one common centre. Again, this last great prayer meeting is to be, in the fullest and widest sense of the word, a united prayer meeting. There is a unity of sin, as well as a unity of holiness, and the attendants at this last strange audience are all thus bound together. Not that it is a real unity. There seems to be very little of anything like a corporate feeling in this last great gathering. Every man is engaged with his own thoughts, offering his own prayer, yet are they all brought together to one point, and all induced to address a certain particular class of objects, and to offer a certain particular kind of prayer by one vast, common, overwhelming necessity, which spreads its fearful influence over them all. It is a united prayer meeting; and as I contemplate that vast gathering, I find all earthly distinctions have vanished. Social distinctions have passed away. The prince kneels beside the peasant. Again, I observe that all ecclesiastical distinctions have vanished. Yet, again, I notice that in this prayer meeting every man is thoroughly in earnest. I wish I could say as much of the prayer meetings held here on earth in our day. Yet, again, I observe that these men who pray so well and so earnestly are precisely the people who were least given to that pursuit while on earth: the people we very seldom see at prayer meetings here. Yet, again, it is a meeting at which every man prays with a very definite purpose. If I were asked, What is the particular fault of our modern prayer meetings? I should say — Indefiniteness. Yet, again, I notice in this prayer meeting a peculiarity that we do not frequently observe in our gatherings for prayer. I find that every man prays for himself. Now I do not think we ought to confine our prayers to ourselves, but we should pray to a far better purpose if we sometimes prayed out of our own hearts, and asked for the things we ourselves need. People seem rather to aim at employing vague expressions than making their wants known in a spirit of believing supplication to God. And now we come to consider the strangest feature of all. While there are ten thousand times ten thousand voices, it may be, lifted up in supplication, yet we are astonished at observing that of all these prayers that go ringing around a startled world there is not so much as one single petition that is offered to Almighty God — not one. When these praying men were down here on earth they were always flying away from God; they did not want to have anything to do with Him; they could get on very well without Him; they were worshippers of nature; they were believers in second causes — not that they were all such by profession, but they were so practically. These men have made earth their God: they have bowed down before the spirit of this world: they have enthroned that subtle intelligence of evil who has usurped the sovereignty of this fallen world within their hearts. They have practically made him the lord of their will, and submitted their nature to his control; and now, when the last terrible moment comes, and these men are gathered together for their last great prayer meeting, not one of them prays to God. Why? Because the Nemesis of their own sin has come upon them. What is it? Before they would not pray to God, and now they dare not. Where is the answer to come from? These prayers are not addressed to God: they do not reach the place where His honour dwelleth: they dare not hope that they will penetrate into His ears and reach His heart. No: their own consciences forbid such an expectation. Such will be the last prayer meeting. And now I want to ask a question, Are any of you ambitious to bear a part in it?

(W. H. M. H. Aitken, M. A.)

1. We have here a glimpse of the constitution and general condition of society at the time these prodigies befall the world. Suppose that the sixth seal were to be opened to-night, what would it find? Kings and emperors on their thrones; princes, nobles, dukes, and lords securely priding themselves in the prerogatives of their caste and station; rich people wallowing in wealth and luxury; men and women in high places and in low working the wires that fashion events; slaves toiling at their tasks and freedmen just out of their bondage; and evidences everywhere of a depraved and disordered state of things. This is what the judgment would find if it came to-night. And this, John tells us, is what it finds when it does come in reality.

2. There is one thing, however, which shall be very different under the opening of the sixth seal from what it is now. The self-security and composure with which godless people live will then be driven to the winds. Though all the judgments under preceding seals may have failed to appal or arouse them, they will not be able to maintain their equanimity under what this shall bring forth. Self-possession, unshaken courage, dignified composure, philosophic thinking, hopefulness, assurance, and the last remains of the stern intrepidity and statue-like imperturbability which characterise some men now, will then have vanished from humanity. That day will destroy them utterly.

3. We notice also the correct interpretation which mankind will then put upon the terrific disturbances of nature around them. Storms, earthquakes, eclipses, and unusual phenomena in the heavens, are natural symbols of Divine wrath. Modern science calls it superstition. But when the vision of the text comes to be realised, woe to the materialistic, pantheistic, and atheistic philosophies with which men suppose they have rid themselves of the superstitions of antiquity! One flash from the judgment throne will confound them utterly.

4. Nor is it so much the physical prodigies as what they argue that renders the dismay so unsupportable. It is not the shaking, the obscured sun, the falling stars, the recoiling heavens, the moving mountains, so much as the moral truths they flash into the spirit, to wit, that God is on the throne, that sin is a reality, that judgment is come, and that every guilty one must now face an angry Creator. It is not nature's bewildering commotions, for they would willingly have the falling mountains cover them if that would shelter them from what is much more in their view, and far more dreadful to them. What they speak of is, God upon the throne, the fear of His face, the day of reckoning, and the wrath of the Lamb. These are more than all the horrors of a universe in convulsions.

5. And how pitiable and absurd the expedients to which they are driven! Oh, imbecile people! When prayer would have been availing, they scorned and detested it as mean and useless; and now that it is futile, they go at it with a will. Still more absurd is the direction in which they address their prayers. Once they considered it folly that man should call on the living God; but now they pray to dead rocks! Once they thought it philosophic to deny that He who made the ear could hear prayers, or that He with whom is the Spirit, and whose is the power, could answer them; but now they supplicate the deaf and helpless mountains! And yet weaker and more insane is the import of their prayers and efforts. Omniscience and omnipresence are among the natural attributes of God. The very things before these people's eyes should have been enough to teach them this. And yet, philosophers as they are, their proposal is to conceal themselves from the Almighty, and so elude His wrath! Often had shelter and peaceful security been offered them in the mercies of the loving Saviour, and as often had they despised and rejected them; but now the silly souls would take the miserable rocks for saviours! Oh, the foolishness of men who think it folly to serve God!

(J. A. Seiss, D. D.)

I. THE HORROR OF THE REPROBATES.

1. The persons thus amazed with terror are described in the precedent verse, "The kings of the earth," etc. The greatness of man, when it comes to encounter with God, is weakness and vanity. Is he great? Be he never so high, there is One "higher than he, and the Highest of all regardeth it" (Ecclesiastes 8:5), and will subject it. Is he rich? Were he the eldest son of Mammon, and sole heir to all the usurers in the world, can his gold save him? Is vengeance afraid to strike his vessel because his sails be of silk and it is ballasted with refined ore? Shall he buy out his damnation with coin? No, heaven will never take bribes. Is he a chief captain? Be his looks never so stern, his speech never so imperious, impetuous, he may command here and go without. "Man is not saved by the multitude of an host."

2. "They said." They open their lips to confess the invincible and inevitable power of Christ.(1) The sense of present misery takes away atheism. The day of judgment, when it comes, shall find no atheist.(2) The saying that comes from them is desperate; whence note that, in God's just punishment, desperation is the reward of presumption. They that erst feared too little shall now fear too much. Before they thought not of God's justice, now they shall not conceive His mercy.

3. These necessary occurrences thus considered, let us pass to their invocation, wherein is exemplified their error. Here we must observe, To what; For what they call.(1) To what. They are mountains and rocks, unreasonable, yea, insensible creatures.

(a)Negatively, it is clear that they have no acquaintance with God, therefore know not how to direct their prayers unto Him.

(b)Affirmatively, this presents a soul amazed with fear and folly. They call to the mountains that can neither hear nor answer.(2) For what. The benefit that they would have the rocks and the mountains do them is to fall on them and hide them.(a) Despair is ever wishing for death, often impatiently snatching at it in this world; but when the last day comes, so greedily longing for it, that to be sure of it, they desire the mountains to dispatch them.(b) Observe that rocks and mountains are far lighter than sin. Such a weight bore our Saviour that He groaned under it.(c) Observe that before these wicked were lords of nations and countries; now they would be glad of one hole to hide them. Of all their dominions they beg but the barrenest parcel, a rock or mountain; and that to do them a poor office, to conceal them. How much doth man's avarice and ambition covet here, how little contents him hereafter! Nothing helps when God will smite; mountains and rocks are no defence when God pursues (Jeremiah 22:15). God hath a hand that can strike through forts, rocks, and bulwarks. The heavens "melt at the presence of the Lord; if He touch the mountains, they smoke" for it.

II. THE JUDGE, FROM WHOM THEY DESIRE TO BE HIDDEN.

1. "From the face." It was ever the fashion of guiltiness to fly from the presence of God. Adam had no sooner sinned, but he thrusts his head in a bush. Sin's inevitable effect is shame. "Of Him that sitteth." Christ now sits in glory. While He was on earth how little rested He! Hast thou laboured? thou shalt have ease: hast thou travelled in the ways of grace? thou shalt sit on the seat of glory. "On the throne." Christ at this day shall appear in His true majesty.

2. "From the wrath." The wrath of Christ in His justice.

(T. Adams.)

I. ITS UNEXAMPLED STRANGENESS. Who ever saw a lamb in a rage? The more difficulty you have in exciting wrath, the more terrible it is when it appears.

II. ITS INFINITE PURITY. "The Lamb" is the emblem of innocence. This wrath of the "Lamb" is not a passion, but a principle. It is not malign, but benevolent. It is not against existence, but against its sins and its crimes. Conclusion: Learn from this that we turn our greatest blessing into the greatest curse. Our optic and auricular organs may become so diseased as to give to the most beautiful objects and melodious sounds in nature a power to convey into us the most poignant anguish, and so our moral nature may become so corrupt as to turn love into wrath, and blessedness into misery.

(Homilist.)

The first thing which strikes us about the expression is its extreme dramatism. There is nothing so dramatic, in my opinion, as the sight of an emotion contrary to the nature. When a man who has always hid his griefs bursts into tears, when a man, like Arnold, who has always veiled his anger, gives way for once to passion, we are impressed with something like a sense of tragedy; it is a bitter day in summer; it is a storm upon a lake. How can we think of the love of God as interrupted even for a moment by a thing called wrath? Can we any more conceive a limit to the love of God than we can conceive a limit to the power of God? The state of mind he is describing is the wrath of a lamb — a particular kind of wrath. He is considering a mode of anger which is not an interruption of love, but itself a phase of love. The wrath of the Lamb is the wrath of love itself. It is no more an interruption to Divine love than the haze is an interruption to the heat of the morning. The wrath clouds the love; the haze clouds the morning; but both the one and the other have grown out of the very thing they obscure. There is an anger which is incompatible with the absence of love, which could not exist unless love existed before it. Here, then, is the subject which rises before us — the difference between the wrath of the Lamb and the wrath of the lion, between the anger of love and the anger of nature. Now, it seems to me that there are three distinct points of difference between them.

1. And first, I would observe that the wrath of the Lamb, or sacrificial spirit, differs from the wrath of the lion in being purely impersonal. The wrath of the lion says, "I, king of the forest, have received an affront; some one has presumed to do an unkindness to me." The wrath of the Lamb says, "An unkind thing has been done." It keeps the "me" out of the question altogether. It looks at the deed in itself. It refuses to consider the sense of personal injury as a main feature of the case. You have a son who has defied your authority, spent his substance in riotous living. You are incensed at this act of individual disrespect. You resolve to bring him to his senses; you say, "We shall see whether he or I shall be master here." Now, that is quite a legitimate mode of anger, and quits a legitimate ground for it; but it is not the wrath of the Lamb. It is neither good nor bad. It is simply an appetite of nature like any other appetite — like hunger. But it is possible for a father in these circumstances to be filled with indignation on a different ground altogether. It is possible for him to see in his son's delinquency, not an act, but a principle. It is possible for him to feel, not that an insult has been offered to his pride, but that an injury had been done to the universe. It is possible for him to experience, not the sense of a wounded self-love, but an anger from the fact that love itself has been violated. This is the wrath of the Lamb. The Son of Man has reached a splendid impersonality in His judgment of the world. Though Himself at once the greatest and the most wronged of all, He refuses to measure the wrong by His own feeling of pain. He throws Himself into the position of the meanest, the lowliest. I pass to a second point of difference between the wrath of love and the wrath of mere nature.

2. And it is this: The wrath of nature must begin by tearing out pity; the wrath of love is a wrath created by pity. In the former case our indignation is stimulated by hiding the prospective photograph — by shutting our eyes to the possible goodness which the bad man may yet attain. In the latter case the indignation is stimulated by exactly the opposite process — by bringing out the prospective photograph, and considering what the man might be made to become. This brings me to a third point of difference between the two kinds of wrath.

3. They express their feeling in a different formula. The wrath of the lion says, "I must have satisfaction"; the wrath of the Lamb says, "Justice must be satisfied." There is all the difference in the world between giving me satisfaction in a quarrel and satisfying my justice in a wrong. The wrath of the Lamb is always a redemptive wrath. Its first impulse is to buy back what has been enslaved, to restore what has been wrongfully taken, to set at liberty what has been bruised. The wrath of the lion will be satisfied if the delinquent is dead; the wrath of the Lamb pauses not until it learns that the delinquency itself has been wiped away. And this renders powerfully suggestive that theological epigram which represents Christ as paying the debts of humanity. Nothing in a short compass could more completely describe the facts of the case.

(G. Matheson, D. D.)

There is something of appalling significance in so paradoxical an expression as this, of the "Wrath of the Lamb." It makes the wrath trebly potent that it should be wrath, long suppressed, but at length discharged, of a nature essentially and exceptionally meek, patient, long-suffering, easy to be entreated, hard to be angered.

laesa sapius patienia, says the Latin proverb: patience, trespassed upon too often, is converted into wrath. And if, O patience, the long-suffering that is in thee becomes wrath, how great is that wrath! Plutarch says of the Roman populace, on the occasion of a certain tumult, "they thought that the wrath of Fabius now provoked, albeit he was naturally so mild and patient, would prove heavy and is "placable" — all the more so, indeed, because of that natural disposition now abused and overstrained. An eminent critic observes, in arguing that all great effects are produced by contrast, that anger is never so noble as when it breaks out of a corn° parative continence of aspect; it is the earthquake bursting from the repose of nature. Charlevoix, in his "Histoire de St. Domingo," remarks of the sea of the Antilles and neighbouring isles that R is commonly more tranquil than ours; "but, like certain people who are excited with difficulty, and whose transports of passion are as violent as they are rare, so when the sea becomes irritated, it is terrific."

(Francis Jacox, B. A.)

The lamb is the most simply innocent of all animals. Historically, also, it had become a name for sacrifice. Under this twofold reason Christ is set forth as the Lamb. The lamb is but the complemental gentleness of God's judicial vigour. We must have the right to believe in the real Christ, and not that theologic Christ which has so long been praised, as it were, into weakness, by the showing that separates Him from all God's decisive energies and fires of combustion, and puts Him over against them, to be only a pacifier of them by His suffering goodness. Our Christ must be the real King — Messiah — and no mere victim; He must govern, have His indignations, take the regal way in His salvation. His goodness must have fire and fibre enough to make it Divine. Wrath must be kept as a moral, not merely animal, passion, or it will connect associations of unregulated temper that are wholly unsuitable. We understand by wrath, as applied to God and to Christ, a certain principled heat of resentment towards evil. doing and evil-doers, such as arms the good to inflictions of pain or just retribution upon them. It is not the heat of revenge. It is that holy heat which kindles about order and law, and truth and light, going in, as it were, spontaneously to redress their wrongs, and chastise the injuries they have suffered. Is it, then, a fact that Christ, as the incarnate Word of God, embodies and reveals the wrath principle of God, even as He does the patience, or love-principle, and as much more intensely? On this point we have many distinct evidences.

1. Christ cannot be a true manifestation of God when He comes in half the character of God, to act upon, or qualify, or pacify, the other half. If only God's affectional nature is represented in Him, then He is but a half manifestation. If the purposes of God, the justice of God, the indignations of God, are not in Him — if anything is shut away, or let down, or covered over — then He is not in God's proportions, and does not incarnate His character.

2. Christ can be the manifested wrath of God without being any the less tender in His feeling or gentle in His patience. In the history of Jesus we see occasions in which He actually displays the judicial and the tender, most affectingly, together and in the very same scene, as in His denouncing and weeping over Jerusalem.

3. God, without the wrath-principle, never was, and Christ never can be, a complete character. This element belongs inherently to every moral nature. God is no God without it; man is no man without it. It is this principled wrath, in one view, that gives staminal force and majesty to character.

4. It is a conceded principle of justice that wrong-doers are to suffer just according to what they deserve. In Christianity God is not less just or more merciful, but He is more fitly and proportionately expressed.

5. One of the things most needed in the recovery of men to God in this very thing — a more decisive manifestation of the wrath-principle and justice of God. Intimidation is the first means of grace.

6. We can see for ourselves that the more impressive revelation of wrath, which appears to be wanted, is actually made in the person of Christ, as in His driving out the money-changers and denouncing the hypocritical Pharisees.

7. Christ is appointed and publicly undertakes to maintain the wrath-principle officially, as the Judge of the world, even as He maintains the love-principle officially, as the Saviour of the world. He even declares that authority is given Him to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man. But the wrath-principle in Christ is only that judicial impulse that backs Him in the infliction of justice whenever justice requires to be inflicted. And it does not require to be inflicted always; it never ought to be when there is anything better that is possible. Put it down, then, first of all, at the close of this great subject, that the New Testament gives us no new God, or better God, or less just God, than we had before. He is the I AM of all ages, the I AM that was, and is, and is to come; the same that was declared from the beginning "The Lord God, gracious and merciful, forgiving iniquity, transgressions, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty."

(H. Bushnell, D. D.)

I. WHO ARE THE PERSONS WHOSE ASPECT AND APPEARANCE SHALL THEN BE SO DREADFUL TO SINNERS? It is God, the Father of all, and the Lamb of God.

II. HOW COMES THE WRATH OF THAT GREAT DAY TO BE SO TERRIBLE?

1. It is wrath that ariseth from the clearest discoveries of the love of God neglected.

2. It is wrath that is awakened by the expensive methods of salvation being slighted (Isaiah 5:4; Isaiah 55:1).

3. It is wrath that must avenge the affronts done to the chief messenger of God's mercy.

4. It is such wrath as ariseth from the patience of God, tired and worn out by the boldest iniquities of men.

5. It is such wrath as shall be executed immediately and eternally.

III. HOW VAIN ALL THE REFUGES AND HOPES OF SINNERS WILL BE FOUND IN THAT DREADFUL DAY, TO AVOID THIS WRATH AND VENGEANCE!

1. Rocks and mountains, whose aid is sought in the last extremity of distress, will be but as spiders' webs. What folly to call upon creatures to help them against their Creator! (Proverbs 9:21).

2. Rocks and mountains, though places of secrecy and concealment, cannot hide them from the eyes of God (Proverbs 15:3; Jeremiah 23:1. 24).

3. Rocks and mountains, though bulwarks of defence and places of security, cannot stand before the indignation of the Almighty (Nahum 1:2, 6).

4. Rocks and mountains falling upon us are instruments of sudden death.To conclude.

1. What a wretched mistake it is to imagine that God is all mercy, and Jesus Christ nothing else but love and salvation!

2. The day of Christ's patience makes haste to an end (Psalm 2:12).

3. How very different will the thoughts of sinners be in that day! (Isaiah 2:10, 21).

4. What hideous and everlasting mischief is contained in rejecting the gospel of Christ!

5. Sinners, consider your ways, the danger you are in, and the need you have of a Saviour (Psalm 61:2).

6. You, whose defence is the Rock of Ages, continue in Him (Revelation 2:10).

(T. Hannam.)

And this wrath impends over every impenitent and unforgiven sinner.

I. IT IS SURE TO FALL UPON HIM IN DUE TIME. It is not a simple possibility. It is not merely a threat to terrify him. It is as sure in the future as God Almighty's Word and throne.

1. Eternal and Omnipotent Justice has decreed it.

2. Revelation declares it on almost every page.

3. The providence of God illustrates and confirms His Word.

II. IT IS SURE, IN DUE TIME, TO FALL UPON THE SINNER IN ALL THE TERRIBLENESS OF ITS POWER AND SEVERITY.

1. Here mercy tempers justice. Here wrath is restrained and grace works. Here the blood and intercession of Jesus Christ, and the tears and prayers of the Church, prevail to mitigate the severity of God's anger.

2. This is the world of probation, not of final award.

3. The day of reckoning is appointed after death.

4. "The wrath of the Lamb" will not break forth till the great day of assize shall have come. So that all we know and see of the Divine wrath against sin and incorrigible sinners, in this life, is only an "earnest" of that awful tempest that will burst in fury upon the ungodly when "the great day of His wrath" shall have come.

III. THIS WRATH WILL BE JUSTLY DESERVED. It might have been turned aside; voluntary sin, and the persistent refusal of mercy and grace, will have provoked it. It is not simply the wrath of a God of eternal righteousness, hating all iniquity and bound to vindicate outraged justice in the interest of good government; but it is also "the wrath of the Lamb," kindled by slighted love, by rejected mercy, by the blood of the covenant counted an unholy thing, by all His bloody sweat and agony and intercession despised!

(J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)

I. WHY IT IS HERE CALLED "THE GREAT DAY OF WRATH."

1. It may be called the great day of wrath inasmuch as no other preceding day of wrath ever equalled it. If all the tempests that ever roared, and all the vivid flashes of lightning that were ever seen, and all the hoarse thunders that have ever rolled, and all the roaring of the sea and every noise that has taken place, were all united together in one great swell, it would be nothing to the confusion of that great day. "The heaven shall pass away with a great noise." We are told that if you put one drop of water upon an anvil, and some heated iron over it, and strike the iron, that drop of water will explode, and make a sound equal to that attending the discharge of a musket. If one drop of water will produce such a sound, what will it be when all the watery vapours surcharged with fire shall burst in one mighty and terrible crash?

2. It may be called so if we remember that it will be the last day. The sun will shine, on the morning of that day, for the last time. All the wheels of nature will come to a standstill; all the mysterious and intricate movements of time will cease.

3. But we may call it a great day of wrath, more particularly, if we remember that it will be the judgment day.

4. It will be a great day of wrath if we consider, moreover, the Judge who will preside on that day, and I-Its character. Jesus Christ Himself will be the Judge — very consoling to the believer, because the Judge will be his best Friend; exceedingly annoying to the sinner, for he will have sins revealed that he would not have known for ten thousand worlds. Jesus Himself, who is impartial, who will then be inexorable — He will be the Judge. Ah, now is the time. The Saviour will listen to your cry this night. Therefore, when we consider who is the Judge, that He will be inexorable, and will not be then entreated, we may say that it is a great day of wrath.

II. "WHO SHALL BE ABLE TO STAND?" A safe and Scriptural answer to this question is, indeed, very important.

1. "Who shall be able to stand?" Not the swearer: he has asked God to destroy his soul and body, and now all his prayers shall be answered. Not the liar: all liars shall have their part in "the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." Not the drunkard: he will receive something now more hot than alcohol. Not the hypocrite: the mask will fall off. Not the formalist. Not the backslider. And thus we may go on answering the question in a negative way.

2. I fancy I hear a voice coming from some one in this audience — "Well, I am very glad that you have made an exception of me: I am sure that I do not belong to the bundle of swearers," etc. Stop, friend, there is one bundle yet; if you are not there, well, then, we must put you aside. Where is that large bundle of gospel hearers — men and women who have heard the Word and have not obeyed it? You are there.

3. Those, and those alone, will stand in the great day of wrath, who are resting entirely upon the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

(1)They will have their characters publicly vindicated.

(2)They will gather in the fruit of their labours.

(J. D. Smith.)

I. WHOSE IS THE WRATH HERE SPOKEN OF? As a Lamb the Saviour stands on Mount Zion, surrounded by a thousand hosts of His redeemed; as a Lamb He appears before the throne, receiving the prostrate adoration of the elders; as a Lamb He appears as a Bridegroom waiting for the New Jerusalem, "adorned as a bride prepared for her husband"; and as a Lamb He is represented as standing in the very midst of the throne, with His wounds all fresh, intimating H us that He is still sustaining to His Church the functions of a prevailing, unchangeable, everlasting priesthood. And this image is manifestly designed to set before us various attributes in the character of our Redeemer. First, no doubt it is designed to endear to us the mild and gentle attributes of His nature; to show to us how patient He is to forgive injuries, how long He will bear with the sinner's affronts, how hard it is to arouse Him from the serene calm of His holy nature, what a "strange work" it is with Him to punish and destroy. But in the text there is an adjunct to this image, which at first seems to take away from its fitness and propriety; it would seem to suggest to us attributes of an opposite and conflicting kind; for who ever heard of "the wrath" of a lamb? Why is it that, on this occasion, the Saviour appears not under one of His more majestic titles — as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," tearing the seed of the rebellious to pieces? This title is retained even in describing the solemn day of Christ's appearing as a witness, as a warning, as a setting forth of the aggravated character of man's disobedience, and the utter exclusiveness of a despised salvation.

II. WHAT IT IS IN THAT DAY THAT WILL MAKE "THE WRATH OF THE LAMB" SO TERRIBLE.

1. First, it will be because then this "wrath" will be felt to have been deserved. Well may the Lamb say to those who have refused Him on that day, "What more could I have done for you that I have not done? I gave Myself to the insults of men, to the buffetings of Satan, to the piercing of the sword of justice, to the degradation and shame of the Cross."

2. Again: the "wrath" will be felt to have been deserved on account of the light we enjoy, and the means used by the offended Man to bring us to a knowledge of Himself, and to constrain us to embrace the offers of His love.

3. Then another consideration which will make this wrath so terrible will be its utter implacableness, the awful consciousness that it can never change through the ages of eternity, that the Lamb will never put on those aspects of gentleness, and pity, which were turned towards us in the day of our probation and our hope.

III. WHO ARE THEY THAT "SHALL BE ABLE TO STAND"? Of course the first answer to this is, they are those who are in Christ Jesus. Who are they that shall stand? Why, they are those who feel that they have made Christ their one entire sole dependence: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." "Trust in the Lord; for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." "O Lord, our Lord, other gods besides Thee have had dominion over us; but by Thee only will we make mention of Thy name." Then, once more: there is good hope that we shall be able to stand in the day of Christ if we are of those who are waiting for, and hastening to, and desiring His appearing.

(D. Moore, M. A.)

? — There will assuredly come a day of judgment. The material universe symbolically prophecies some such a moral crisis in the history of man. The flowing river, the growing plants, the breathing tribes, the planetary systems, all tend to a crisis. The unremitting increase from age to age in the human family, viewed in connection with the limited capacity of this planet to sustain animal existence, irresistibly indicates some such a turning point in human history. The universal and concurrent references of the human conscience through all ages and lands, give a high probability to the dawn of such a moral juncture. The Bible settles the question. The sentence preceding the text calls it a great day. It will be "great," on account of the number and variety of the moral beings that will be assembled together; great, on account of the results which will then be effected — redemptive providences ended, and the agencies of a righteous retribution brought into full play; great, on account of the thrilling interest it will awake through all the realms of moral existence the universe over; great, on account of the Divine glories that will then be displayed. But our point now is — Who shall be able to stand on that day? In order to illustrate this solemn question I shall suppose a case. What under a legal charge could enable you to look calmly forward to the coming day of trial, feeling that you could stand? We can only conceive of seven things which would answer this purpose.

I. A CONSCIOUSNESS OF INNOCENCE AND THE POWER OF SHOWING THAT THE CHARGE HAS NO FOUNDATION.

II. ASSURANCE THAT THE EVIDENCE WILL BE FOUND INSUFFICIENT TO CONVICT. There will be —

1. The omniscient Judge. He knows everything about you.

2. There will be present the persons to whom and through whom you have sinned.

3. Then there will be conscience within you bearing the strongest testimony against you.

III. A FEELING THAT THE CRIME WITH WHICH YOU ARE CHARGED IS VERY INSIGNIFICANT. No. Sin, believe me, is no trifling matter.

1. Think of it in its relation to God. It is a violation of the most righteous laws, for He is your Sovereign. It is a violation of the highest trust; for He is your Proprietor, and you are His stewards. It is a violation of the most wonderful love. He is your loving Father — your merciful Redeemer.

2. Think of it in its bearing on yourself and on the universe. "One sinner destroyeth much good." This then will not serve you, will not enable you to stand in the judgment. Another thing that might answer the purpose in the supposed case is: —

IV. A FELT CAPABILITY OF PROVING THAT THE CRIME WAS COMMITTED ACCIDENTALLY, NOT BY PURPOSE.

V. FAITH IN THE SYMPATHY OF THE WHOLE COURT IN YOUR FAVOUR.

VI. AN ABILITY TO PROVE THAT YOU HAVE RENDERED SIGNAL SERVICE TO THE STATE.

VII. THE ASSURANCE THAT SOME ONE HAS SUCCESSFULLY INTERPOSED BETWEEN YOU AND THE SUPERIOR AUTHORITY. On the pages of the Bible I find written in sunbeams, that in consequence of what Christ has done, and is willing to do, for us as sinners, we may escape the sad consequences of our sins, and stand triumphantly in the Day of Judgment.

(Homilist.).