should read, immediately after the words now under consideration, that _Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath_. But the answer is substantially contained in what has been said. When Jerusalem is first thought of as "the great city," it is as the city of "the Jews," as the centre and essence of those principles by which spiritual is transformed into formal religion, and all sins are permitted to hide and multiply under the cloak of a merely outward piety. When it is next thought of as Babylon, the conception is extended so as to embrace, not a false Judaism only, but a similar falseness in the bosom of the universal Church. Just as "the great city where also our Lord was crucified" widened in chap. xi. 8 to the thought of Sodom and Egypt, so here it widens to the thought of Babylon. May it not be added that we have thus in the mention of Jerusalem and Babylon a counterpart to the mention in chap. xv. 3 of "the song of Moses and the Lamb"? These two expressions, as we have seen, comprehend a song of _universal_ victory. Thus also the two expressions, "the great city" and "Babylon," having one and the same idea at their root, comprehend all who in the professing Church of the whole world are faithless to Christian truth. Further effects of the last judgment follow. _Every island fled away, and the mountains were not found._ Effects similar, though not so terrible, had been connected with the sixth Seal. Mountains and islands had then been simply "moved out of their places."[442] Now they "flee away." Similar effects will again meet us, but in an enhanced degree.[443] As yet, while mountains and islands flee away, the earth and the heavens remain. In the last description of the judgment of the wicked the heavens and the earth themselves flee away from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and no place is found for them. The climax in the different accounts of what is substantially the same event cannot be mistaken. The same climax appears in the statement of the next effect, _the great hail, every stone about the weight of a talent_, that is, fully more than fifty pounds. No such weight had been spoken of at the close of the seventh Trumpet in chap. xi. 19. Again, however, there is no repentance and no conversion. Those who suffer are the deliberate and determined followers of the beast. As under the fourth Bowl, therefore, so under the seventh they rather blaspheme God amidst their sufferings, _because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof is exceeding great_. FOOTNOTES: [418] Exod. xv. 1. [419] Isa. lxi. 10. [420] Ezek. xxviii. 13. [421] Comp. chap. vi. [422] Exod. xl. 35. [423] 1 Kings viii. 11. [424] Isa. vi. 4. [425] Exod. xix. 18; Heb. xii. 18. [426] Chap. xv. 1. [427] Comp. chap. viii. 7 and xvi. 2. [428] Comp. chap. viii. 8, 9 and xvi. 3. [429] Comp. chap. viii. 10, 11 and xvi. 4. [430] Comp. chap. viii. 12 and xvi. 8.