were not to be the immediate consequences of war, but were to spring from some other cause.

The word translated balance, according to its primary acceptation, signifies a yoke, and is generally so rendered in the New Testament. But, as this instrument of husbandry not only binds the oxen together, but compels them to perform equal shares of labour in the field, the word which signifies a yoke was, by an easy accommodation, used to denote a balance. This secondary meaning is the only one that can be admitted here. Not to mention the incongruity of the figure, were we to suppose that a yoke is intended, as this instrument constitutes no part of the furniture of a horse, nor is any of the implements by which human labour is performed, it is difficult to conceive how any ordinary rider could be represented as holding it with the same facility as a whip or rod in his hand. If we adopt the secondary meaning, as in the version before us, the emblem will appear to be natural, and will admit of a very easy interpretation.

The use of a balance is, to ascertain the weight or just proportion of the articles of commerce. In many cases, it would be impossible to do justice between the buyer and the seller, without the intervention of a pair of scales; hence, in all ages and in all countries, justice has been symbolized by a balance. It is also the hieroglyphic of famine. In this sense the figure is generally used in Scripture, Ezek. iv. 16. And, when we consider both the colour of the horse, and the enormous price of the articles of subsistence, it is natural to suppose, that this balance is intended to symbolize a state of famine, or some condition of society which borders upon that calamity. But whether it is a famine of the bread and water of life, or of those things only that are necessary for the subsistence of the body, the history of the period to which the prophecy refers will afford the best means of ascertaining.

We are next informed of the things which John heard, as in verse 6. When he was contemplating the horse and the rider, he heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts. As the

living creatures composed the inner circle of worshippers, the voice must have proceeded from the throne, and could not be any other than the voice of God himself; there was, therefore, every reason why John should pay attention to what was said. If it was his duty to listen to the voice of the ministers saying, 'Come and see,' it was still more his reasonable service to listen to the voice of the King, especially when he addressed him from the throne. The quarter from which this voice proceed ed could not leave a doubt upon the mind of the prophet with respect to the speaker, and could not fail to awaken his reverence and awe, as it behoved also to excite his greatest attention.

Two different sayings were uttered. The first contains a positive declaration respecting the means of subsistence; A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny. It is difficult to ascertain the precise value of the coins of the ancients, and equally difficult to determine the contents of their standards of dry measure. The word here used is sup posed to be the name of that standard which contained the rate of grain that was allotted for the maintenance of a slave for one day. From the parable of the labourers it appears, that the Roman coin called a penny was the ordinary wages of a labourer for the services of a day, Matt. xx. 2. In plentiful seasons, sixteen, and sometimes even twenty measures of wheat could be purchased for a penny; accordingly, when this sum was sufficient to purchase only one of these measures, a very great degree of scarcity must have prevailed. The poor labourer must be provided with many things besides the bare article of food; and if, by all his exertions, he can earn only what is barely sufficient for his own subsistence, what, in such seasons, must be the condition of those families in which, together with a wife and children, two aged parents are depen dent upon the exertions of the husband! Some have interpreted this declaration, of a state of plenty; but, if the prophet had been told in express terms, that, under this seal, there would be a great want of the means of subsistence, this

mournful truth could not have been presented in more legible characters before his mind. When the articles of life cannot be purchased, but at the extravagant rate of sixteen or twenty times their ordinary value, or when the labourer, who receives the ordinary wages of the country, finds that they are barely sufficient for his personal subsistence, if such a season is not a time of famine, it must be one of very extraordinary dearth, and the condition of the poorer classes of society must be the same as though the fields had yielded no meat.

The appearance of the horse greatly corroborates this interpretation, as black is the usual colour of the body when it is pinched with hunger. Our skin,' said Jeremiah, was black like an oven, because of the terrible famine,' Lam. v. 10. The balance, too, is a strong corroborative circumstance, as if it were intended to intimate, that the scarcity would be so great, this pennyworth of wheat and barley would be weighed as well as measured. The hungry family would be loath to lose a single particle of what they could claim as their own; the factor, or merchant, would be equally unwilling, that they should receive any more than what they could legally claim; and therefore both would be inclined to have the matter determined by the application of different standards.

The other saying contains a prohibition respecting the luxuries of life, as in the close of the verse; And see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. The ministers of judgment might destroy the wheat and barley at their pleasure; but the oil and wine were not to be injured. Accordingly, the poor labourer might suffer all the calamities of famine, while the wealthy and opulent might enjoy even the luxuries of life in abundance.— At first view this prohibition may seem as if it were intended to mark an alleviating circumstance in the character of the times, viz., that there would be plenty of some articles, though there might be a scarcity of others. But this very circumstance would only aggravate the feelings of the poor. How afflicting to see the opulent feeding and regaling themselves with the usual dainties of the most plentiful seasons, while they, with all

their exertions, were unable to procure the means of subsistence for themselves and their families! We are not to envy the prosperity of the rich, or to grudge them the use of that liberal portion of the good things of Providence with which they are favoured; but, while the poor have feelings as well as the rich, and the domestic attachments of the one are as strong as those of the other, it will be impossible for the man of poverty to contrast the circumstances of his indigent family with those of his wealthy neighbour, and not feel the more sensibly, when he sees the fulness of the one and the pinching necessities of the other. It greatly aggravated the affliction of Jerusalem, when she remembered all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old; and it must necessarily augment the afflictions of the poor, when they see others clothed in scarlet, and faring sumptuously, while their own families are clothed in rags, and have nothing to eat.

To those unacquainted with the natural history of Palestine, the description may appear to be somewhat contradictory. If seasons should be so unfavourable, that the necessaries of life would with difficulty be obtained, is it reasonable to suppose, that oil and wine, and other luxuries, would be as abundant as ever? But there is nothing unnatural in this supposition; the heat that parched and burnt up the fields of the husbandman might make the oil distil more freely from the tree, and likewise cherish the clusters of the vine; and thus the same season which diminished the necessary means of the subsistence of the poor might increase the luxuries and the comforts of the rich.

I shall now consiler the application and history of the fulfilment of this prophecy.-That it refers to a time of very great scarcity, though no of absolute want, is sufficiently evident from the language inwhich it is expressed. But of what particular kind, whether temporal or spiritual, it has been very differently understood: there is enough in the period to which it refers that would jutify its application to both.

This seal is supposed to commence with the reign of Marcus

Antoninus Pius, and to run forward to the conclusion of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher, if not to the conclusion of the reign of Severus, in the year 211. And during the whole of this period, many parts of the church were griev, ously afflicted with a famine of the word of the Lord.---Persecution, in all ages, has been directed against the ministers of religion; many of them had fallen by the cruel and unjust measures of Domitian, Trajan, and Adrian; they had been fitly symbolized by oxen, not only on account of their patience, but because they were led as oxen to the slaughter. Succeeding emperors manifested the same severity in their proceedings against the survivors, till the greater part of those who had been so fortunate as to escape the notice of the former, were sacrificed to the resentment of the latter. Hence, in many parts of the church, there were no ministers left to dispense the ordinances of religion; they were either removed into corners, or cut off out of the land of the living; and, as a necessary consequence of this, a famine of the word of the Lord ensued.

In justice, however, to the memory of some of these emperors, it is necessary to remark, that their persecuting measures did not, like those of Nero and Domitian, proceed from mere cruelty, or from a total want of moral principle. They originated from false representations of the Christian character, and were prosecuted in the way of a mistaken application of the principle of public justice. Heathen priests and philosophers represented the Christians as the worst of nen, both because they had renounced the religion of their fatlers, and were said to be guilty of the most monstrous crimes; and, as the ministers of the Christians were considered as the ringleaders of the sect, and the principal actors in those senes of wickedness which were said to take place among then, they were sought after with peculiar assiduity, and put to leath.-It had been enacted by Adrian, That neither ministes, nor private Christians, were to be punished on account oftheir religion, but for crimes committed against the state, of which they had been regularly accused and convicted. To vade the force of this