How gratifying, then, to the spectator when he beheld a coronal wreath bestowed upon him — "and there was given to him a Ste­phanos, ” not a diadema.

But John not only saw the coming of this “most happy and prosperous period” in the color of the horse, but he saw a rider upon him. The rider of a horse is one who governs, controls, influences him in all his movements. He is active, while the horse is passive and subject to his will. The Roman horse, or people, in this first seal- period, were to be ridden, or subjected to certain activities, which would result in such a consummation as was indicated by other elements of the figuration.

In regard to the period thus propitiously initiated by the reign of Nerva, Gibbon has remarked that, “were a man called to fix upon an epoch in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was the most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus,” namely, from A.D. 96, to A.D. 180.

“And 1 saw, and behold, a White Horse, and One sitting upon him having a Bow, and there was given to him a coronal wreath; and he went forth conquering, and that he might con­quer. ”

But beside the symbolic Lamb we find the Four Living Ones acting a part in connection with the first four seal-periods. They are not introduced into the drama as mere drapery and ornament; but as representative of a class of agents performing a very important part in association with the Lamb during the first four seal-periods.

Such was the secondary agency in this revolutionary event, but

But heark! Hear ye not, O ye servants of the Deity, that “voice of thunder,” issuing from that one of the four living ones like a lion, and inviting you to “Come and see!” It is the voice of the Spirit, as fatal to Domitian as the writing of the same spirit upon the wall was to Belshazzar on the night he was slain. The voice is the opening voice of the first-seal period, A.D. 96. A voice that changed the times, and whitened the situation of the affairs of the great Roman Habitable.

But, in reading the first four seals, the student of this prophecy must have been struck by the symbolization of which the war-horse is the root. What does this sign import? What use does the Spirit of Christ make of the horse in prophecy ? What does He signify by it, and what did he intend it to signify when he exhibited it before John, now

This sixth chapter of the prophecy constitutes the rehearsal of the first six acts of the tragical conflict between the Lamb and his adherents of the one part, and the constituted authorities of Greek and Latin Paganism in Church and State of the other. The translation given is of the text amended by Griesbach, and compared with that of Tregelles, and others, whose rendering, however, has had but little influence with the author.

The opening of the first six seals in order, the cumulative effect of which is the abolition of the heaven which hindered the manifestation of the Lawless Power.

Apoc. 6