8.  And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and
    power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.

    9.  And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the
    name of God, which hath power over these plagues:  and they
    repented not to give him glory.

The sun is the great central luminary of the earth, under whose genial light and warmth everything rejoices and develops in forms of beauty.  When, however, a scorching power is given to his rays, the earth becomes as a furnace in which every green thing is burnt up.  What the sun is to this world, such are the ruling powers to a kingdom; and power being given them to scorch as with fire denotes that the government would be administered, not for the good of the people, but for the purpose of oppression.  A scorching sun, therefore, is a proper symbol of tyrant rulers.

Still keeping in view the object of God in sending these first plagues—­the punishment of the nations embraced within the territory of the ten former kingdoms of Europe—­we are directed with certainty to the next great scourge that followed as a result of those already developed—­the almost universal military empire of Napoleon.  The success of three of the four greatest military leaders the world has ever seen—­Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne—­has been so clearly predicted by inspiration that no believer in the truth of Revelation attempts to deny it; therefore it is not surprising that the fourth—­Napoleon—­ should also be assigned a place in Apocalyptic vision:  not so much because of his all-powerful military genius merely, but because of his mighty influence and effects upon the very nations that were especially made the subject of prophecy, as they stand connected with the history of God’s people for centuries.  At the close of the Revolution the French nation had not virtue nor religion necessary to remedy the evils under which they had long been suffering from the oppression of their monarchs; for when they undertook the work and demolished the throne, they let loose all the wildest elements of wrath to rage without restraint.  The nation rejected God, and God rejected the nation.  He gave them up to their own madness, to the fury of the most atrocious wickedness that was ever developed under heaven.  “From the wild excesses and intolerable calamities of blood-red republicanism, the people were rejoiced at length to find a refuge in a gigantic military despotism, which became the terror and scourge of Europe.”  But the hand of God was in this thing, also.  When the sun scorches the earth with burning heat, it is God that gives it its power.  So Napoleon with his iron will and towering genius was only an instrument in God’s hand for scourging the guilty nations.  In the ordinary sense of the term Napoleon was not a tyrant to his own nation.  Still, his government was a despotism to France; while to the Apocalyptic earth, or the ten kingdoms, he was a scorching