The liberty with which Christ would set us free, and which is the glorious calling of the Christian, is the only true freedom of the soul. Without it the tyrant is a slave, and with it the bondsman is free indeed. When it is felt and enjoyed, no manacles can fetter or depress the mind, no bolts of a dungeon can shut out the hope that is heavenly. When Paul and Silas, who had suffered the loss of all things for Jesus' sake, were cast into prison, after their clothes were rent off, and many stripes had been laid upon them, and they were thrust into the inner prison, and their feet made fast in the stocks, at midnight they prayed, and sang praises unto God. They accounted it all joy to suffer in the cause of their Redeemer. In the believer's reckoning, tribulation, as a trial of faith, is more precious than gold that perisheth; and it is the privilege of the Christian to rejoice evermore. Not loving their lives unto the death, the witnesses of Jesus could cast themselves into the flames. But the love of political liberty, however precious it may be, has no power to charm away the horrors of the dungeon; and to those to whom freedom, in a human sense, is the god of their idolatry, the restraints and privations of the prison-house, without the hope of release, are the bitterest of miseries, under which the heart, unsustained by faith, is broken, and all the powers of the mind give way. Instead of praying and singing praises unto God, there is "moaning and groaning," the voice of agony and despair: and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds, verse 11th.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SIXTH VIAL.

THE invasion of France by the armies of Russia, Prussia, Germany, Sweden, and Britain; the evacuation of Spain by the French and the entrance of the armies into Paris, and the abdication of Bonaparte; the restoration of the Bourbons, and the conclusion of a general peace; the evacuation of Italy, Germany, and Flanders by the French, and their restriction within their ancient boundaries, closed up, 1st, the history of the French Revolution; 2d, of the greatest of naval wars; 3d, of the wars of the directory and consulate of France; and 4th, those of the empireor, in other words, the first, second, third and fourth vials of the wrath of God had been poured upon the earth. But the plagues were not at an end, nor had the judgments ceased. As these ended another began; and the same eventful year, 1814, which terminated, for a season, so many convulsions, was marked also-as even an almanack testifies-by the restoration of Ferdinand, the dissolution of the Cortes, the abrogation of the new constitution and of all laws favourable to the liberty of the press, the revival of the inquisition and of the order of the Jesuits, and the re-establishment of the pope in his dominions. The soldiers of Napoleon withdrew from Roman Catholic countries, and the priesthood reassumed its place. A system of coercion, and of the repression of liberty, was established by the sovereigns. of Continental Europe; and, in suppressing revolution, freedom was stifled. But passive slavery was no longer the character of the time. A high and a hard hand could alone keep down freedom, or pre

vent the rising of anarchy. And, notwithstanding the league of monarchs, only six years elapsed-from 1814 to 1820-a period repeatedly referred to in the preceding extracts, till three revolutions burst forth in the Roman Catholic kingdoms of Europe, and gave to "the constitutionalists" in Spain, Portugal, and Naples a brief suspense from their bondage, which lasted in the two former kingdoms for the space of three years, when a counter-revolution in Portugal and the invasion of Spain by the French, under the Bourbons, rivetted their chains anew, and aggravated their woes.

During this very period-from 1820 to 1823of the partially suspended operation of the fifth vial, the sixth vial, it would seem, began to be poured out. From a state of previous quiescence, those commotions of the Turkish empire then originated, which, followed as they have been by convulsion after convulsion, have already put its existence to the stake.

The locality of the third vial-that of the rivers and fountains of waters-is not more precisely determined by that of the third trumpet, defined in the same words, than the sphere of the sixth vial is identified with that of the sixth trumpet.

And the sixth angel sounded; and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the GREAT RIVER EUPHRATES. And the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. Rev. ix. 13-15.

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the GREAT RIVER EUPHRATES; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. Rev. xvi. 12.

The Turkish empire, under the same designation which it had previously borne, is here manifestly represented anew. Its early history and establishment in Europe, by the taking of Constantinople, have already been related. Its existence ceased not, nor did the woe pass away, when the period was completed during which the Turks were "prepared to slay;" but we have now to look on it again in another form, than sweeping over countries like a whirlwind, and overflowing them with myriads of horsemen; and the time is come that we have to resume its history, with the prophetic record before a very different fate.

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Symbolized by the Euphrates, the fall and finally the dissolution of the Turkish empire are marked by the drying up of its water. The significancy of the figure is interpreted in another vision. waters which thou sawest are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, Rev. xviii. 15. The extinction or subversion of the empire of the Turks, would be like the drying up of a great river-the people like the water.

From first to last prophecy needs no comment but the history which it prefigured, or plainly foretold. The year 1820 was distinguished by three revolutions in the Catholic kingdoms of Europe, a brief intermission of the vial of wrath; but the darkness did not pass away, and the misery soon returned, and neither has yet disappeared from the kingdom of the beast. But, the scene being changed, we may look from the west unto the east, to see whether the sixth vial began to be poured out on the empire of Turkey, at the time when some rays of hope first seemed to penetrate the gloom that rested on the Roman Catholic kingdoms of Europe. Though their place be different, there is no historical chasm left between the fifth vial and the sixth.

"The Ottoman empire, by a long and unwonted good fortune, found itself, at the commencement of the era, (or of 1820) freed at once from foreign war and domestic rebellion. This opportunity it was determined to employ against one who had long been considered rather as an enemy than a subject. Ali Pacha became master not only of the whole of Albania, but of Suli, the ancient Epirus, and of Livadia or Thessaly. His dominion reached from the Adriatic to the frontier of Macedonia, and comprised a population of nearly two millions of souls. Considerable, however, as it was, it could ill enable him to contend with the whole force of the Turkish empire, now (1820) united against him."* Ali and his sons were successively defeated; but the death of the Turkish commander-in-chief "spread a general discouragement through the army. A Turkish force, composed chiefly of tumultuary militia, soon melts away, when it is not fed by success and plunder. In the beginning of December, Chourschid (the Turkish general) found his army so reduced by desertion, and so destitute of supplies and provisions, that he was obliged to retreat to Arta. Ali again came forth, and could again cherish the hope of retrieving his fortune."+

"It is certain, that the rebellion of Ali Pacha determined more than any known event the period of (the Greek) insurrection; as if that monstrous spawn of despotism had been reserved to make, before he perished, one involuntary atonement to liberty for the outrages which he had employed his long life in inflicting upon her. Let us examine the facts for one instant. In the summer of 1820, Ali declared his independence; and in September, the siege of Yanina commenced; in October, the landers + Ibid. 317.

* Annual Register for 1820, Lond. p. 316.