his seat and great authority," there can be no doubt. It appears, from his character and office, that the false prophet is the same as the beast with

two horns.

That the Moslem hierarchy is a false prophet or teacher, no Christian will question; and so preeminently was this the character of the primitive head of this hierarchy, that he has ever received the appropriate title of THE false prophet. It is evident that the title is not confined to Mohammed as an individual, for it is applied to him and his successors until the time of the final decline and fall of his religion.

From his hostility to the Christian religion, and from his control of the civil power, he at first received an appellation not so significant of his ordinary office as the one which appears to have been afterward assigned him. But that the false prophet is really the same personage with the one which performed such wonderful miracles before the beast (ch. xiii.), is very evident from the allusion to these astonishing feats in the account of his final doom (ch. xix., 20): "And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image." Compare ch. xiii., 1215. If this point be established, there appears little room to doubt the identity of the beasts of chapters xiii., 1, and xvi., 10, 13.

THE KINGS OF THE EAST correspond to the two witnesses; and the beast, in each instance, is mentioned in connexion with the sealed remnant of Israel. The followers of Christ are more than once in the Revelation called "kings ;" and the term is not inappropriate to the sons of Israel, who are denominated the Lord's "Anointed" (Ps. cv., 15). In the prophecy of Isaiah (xi., 15, 16) we are told that the Lord would dry up the river (Euphrates) to prepare "a highway for the remnant of his people" Israel. As the final accomplishment of that prediction is future, while the prediction itself entirely corresponds with the events of the sixth vial, we cannot but infer that they both relate to the same people. For who of God's servants, under Mohammedan domination, can with so much propriety be called "the kings of the East" as the remnant of his people which shall be left from Assyria?"

Oppressed as they have been for so many centuries by their Moslem foes, to them especially must the drying up of the symbolical Euphrates be a most important and auspicious event; an event that is rapidly hastening on, as all the signs of the times clearly indicate.

REV., xiv. "And I looked, and lo, a lamb stood on Mount Sion, and with him a hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads." A brighter prospect now opens

before us. The warfare of the beast has ceased; the resistless current of the Euphrates is dried up; the way of the kings of the East is prepared; the daughter of Zion is released from her exile in the wilderness; the witnesses have laid aside their sackcloth; and now we behold them, still wearing in their foreheads "the seal of the living God," standing with their great Deliverer, and attuning their harps and voices to the sweetest song of heaven.

Faithful to the terms of their espousals (Hos., iii.), they have ceased to defile themselves with idols; and He who in solemn covenant had said, "I will betroth thee unto me for ever, in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies and faithfulness" (Hos., ii., 19, 20), has now received them, as the "virgin of Israel," into the most intimate union, henceforth to "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." This evidently relates to the future.

Through the whole period of eighteen centuries since their conversion to Christianity, the Nestorian Christians have remained pure from the defilement of image-worship. It is only at a recent day that Protestant Christendom has separated itself from the universal idolatry which pervaded the Western in common with the Eastern churches. So that of the Nestorians emphatically, and of them alone (if we except, perhaps, the disciples in

the Alps), can it be said, "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins."

"These were redeemed from among men, the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." This is language which can be predicated of no others than the members of the Hebrew Christian Church. Salvation was first proclaimed to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and it was not till numerous converts had been gathered in from the two divisions of Israel and Judah that any one thought of preaching to the Gentiles. In no sense, then, can the latter be called "the first-fruits" of the Gospel. But "Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the first-fruits of his increase" (Jer., ii., 3). So also the converts of Israel are called by the apostle James, in his epistle to the twelve tribes, a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." Paul also claims for them the same relation to the Church, where he says, "If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? For if the first-fruit be holy, the lump is also holy." In the economy of grace, special provision was made to gather in and preserve these first-fruits of the great harvest from the field of God's ancient husbandry.

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Reference is here made to a well-known ordinance of the Jews, which required them to collect

and consecrate to the Lord a small portion of the fruits of their fields before they gathered any for their own consumption. The first-fruits announced the beginning of the harvest; a joyful occasion, which was observed as a season of general. festivity by the Hebrew nation. Thus, when the first-fruits of the Church were brought in, at the beginning of the Christian dispensation, it was the commencement of a general harvest which was speedily gathered throughout the known world. So, also, we have reason to believe, will the ingathering of these "first-fruits" usher in the final and more glorious harvest of the Church. Were there a remaining doubt that such will be the result, or, in other words, that the Nestorian Church is to exert an important agency in the conversion of the world, let that doubt be removed by the flight of the next herald through the ethereal vault: "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying, with a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come” (v. 6, 7). The triumphant response now breaks upon the ear, "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest" (ch. xv., 4).