king of Navarre, and the sister of Charles IX., king of France—­when the gates were closed and the work of wholesale slaughter began at a given signal and raged for three days, during which time from six to ten thousand were butchered in Paris alone!  Think of the rivers of blood in the Netherlands, where the Duke of Alva boasted that in the short space of six weeks he had put eighteen thousand to death!  Witness the dragoonading methods and other inhuman persecutions to “wear out the saints of the Most High,” that followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) by Louis XIV., king of France, during whose reign three hundred thousand were brutally butchered—­while Pope Innocent XI. extolled the king by special letter as follows:  “The Catholic church shall most assuredly record in her sacred annals a work of such devotion toward her, and CELEBRATE YOUR NAME WITH NEVER-DYING PRAISES ... for this most excellent undertaking"!!  My heart sickens with horror in the contemplation of such events.  Eternal God! can thy righteous eye behold such heart-rending scenes of earth, and thy hand of power not be extended to humble to the dust these cruel, haughty oppressors of thy people?

    12.  And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo,
    there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as
    sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

    13.  And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a
    fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a
    mighty wind.

    14.  And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled
    together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their
    places.

15.  And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

    16.  And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us
    from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the
    wrath of the Lamb;

    17.  For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be
    able to stand?

Upon the opening of this seal the scene changes again.  The symbols are all drawn from an entirely different source.  We are taken out of the department of civil life into the scenes of nature, which is a clear evidence that the history of the church is no longer under consideration.  Had God intended to here continue her history, he would no doubt have employed symbols derived from the same source as those preceding, so as to prevent our being led astray.  No more horsemen or living characters appear, but we behold the most terrific convulsions of nature—­a mighty earthquake, the darkening of the sun and the moon, the falling of the stars, and finally the dissolution of the heavens, together with the mountains and the islands being removed.  If the history of the church is no longer under consideration, this great change of symbols directs us with absolute certainty into the political and civil world for their fulfilment.  Of course, we are not to suppose that this is a literal description.