as exhibited during the incarnation in his sacrificial death, may be properly symbolized by a lamb, as in chap.  V, there is no created intelligence in God’s great universe that can be chosen to represent, in his true, essential divinity, Him who does not deem it robbery to claim equality with God.  There may, likewise, be certain symbols connected with his person to give us at least a faint impression of his divine character and infinite majesty; yet when he appears upon the symbolic scene, he distinctly announces, “I am the first and the last:  I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore.”  “He hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”  So whenever the divine Christ appears on the symbolic scene, he comes in his own person, proclaiming his own name, and we need look for no symbol of him.

Upon the opening of the fifth seal, the souls of the martyrs are represented as crying unto God from the altar for the avenging of their blood on those who dwell on the earth.  Where is there an object in all creation analagous to a disembodied spirit?  None can be found.  It is easy to give them an arbitrary name; therefore they appear in the Revelation under their own appropriate title, as “the souls of them that were slain.”  Chap. 6:9, 10, also 20:4.

This exception applies to every case where no corresponding object can be selected as a symbol.  Where the nature of the subject forbids its symbolization, there the description must of necessity be literal, and all such objects appear under their own appropriate titles.  Otherwise, we are to look upon the entire book of Revelation as a vast collection of symbols whose interpretation is to be found, not in the department from which they are taken, but in another, to which they bear a certain analagous resemblance.

Although not pertaining strictly to the subject of symbolic language, yet a word respecting the plan of the prophecy will be appropriate at this time.  The prophetic events are not arranged after the ordinary plan of histories, narrating all the contemporaneous events in a given period, whether civil, religious, literary, scientific, or biographical, thus finishing up the history of that period; but it consists of a number of distinct themes running over the same ground.  The proof of this assertion will appear as we proceed with the development of the prophecies.

May the wisdom of heaven direct us in the perusal of this wonderful book of Revelation, and may we at last be “accounted worthy to obtain that world,” and the glorious privilege of rendering eternal praise to “Him that sitteth upon the throne,” “upholding all things by the word of his power,” “declaring the end from the beginning,” and revealing his mighty works unto the children of men.

CHAPTER I.

    The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show
    unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he
    sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: