errors and systems of error, hostile to the honor of Messiah and the free grace of his gospel, how few can be found in the different nations of the earth, who "overcame by the blood of the Lamb!" The religions established by the nations of the world are all more or less tainted with the errors, and disfigured by the ceremonies of the church of Rome. Surely we have before our eyes a constant fulfilment of the prophecy under consideration. To all outward appearance the woman is in the wilderness. She is in fact so obscure that some of her sons begin to question her visibility. They are ready to cry in despondency,--"The witnesses are slain."--They are mistaken. This is their infirmity. The 1260 years are not yet expired, nor the testimony finished. "When the enemy shall come in _like a flood_, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." (Isa. lix. 19.) The mystic woman is yet in the wilderness, and there she is nourished with the hidden manna "a time, times and half a time," "forty and two months, or twelve hundred and sixty days,"--that is, years; for, as formerly noticed, all these expressions mean the same period of time; the period during which the witnesses prophesy, on the one side, and the gentiles tread the outer court, on the other. The profanation of the holy city,--the church nominal, and the testimony of the witnesses against that conduct, is the same contest which in this chapter is represented under other symbols. The waters of the symbolic flood have spread over all the nations of Christendom, corrupting the very fountains of natural and moral science, literature, politics and religion; so that hardly any principle is accepted by the human mind as settled, but all is thrown into debate. Man's intellect, craving substantial nourishment, and thirsting for refreshment which nothing but the water of life can supply, vibrates between ritualism and skepticism in our day. The flood from the dragon's mouth, consisting of truth and error, a combination of Christianity, refined idolatry and speculative atheism, fails to satisfy the necessary cravings of the immortal soul. "There be many that say, Who will show us any good?" (Ps. iv. 6.)