This vial was poured out upon the "sea." The sea is a large body of water within the earth, subject to violent storms and agitations. As a symbol it would denote some central power or kingdom within the symbolic earth in a state of revolution. The effects produced by this vial were two-fold--the waters were changed into blood as of a dead man, and all the living creatures in the sea died. The waters of the sea represent the inhabitants of this kingdom (see a similar explanation of _water_ in chap. 17:15) as the earth does the inhabitants of the empire, or the ten kingdoms. The living creatures in the sea, therefore, could signify the rulers and princes of the kingdom, as they bear an analagous relation to the people that fishes do to the waters. The statement that the waters of the sea became "as the blood of a dead man" is doubtless intended to signify a much more dreadful state of things than if they had simply been changed to blood. They were converted into black and poisonous, or corrupt, blood. This denotes the vast slaughter and massacre of the inhabitants of this kingdom; while the death of the living creatures denotes the extinction of those in power. It may appear at first that making the conversion of water into blood a symbol of bloodshed is adopting the literal method of interpretation; but not so, and for the following reason: The symbol is taken from nature, the waters of the sea representing the inhabitants of the kingdom. The waters are changed into an unnatural state or element, that of blood, and this change denotes an analagous one passing upon the inhabitants. Their continuing in life would be their remaining as waters: their massacre and destruction would be the waters changed to blood--a horrible and unnatural element. Likewise, the death of the living things in the sea is a similar destruction overtaking the kings, rulers, and princes. With our understanding of the nature of the first vial, which prepared the way for the pouring out of this one, we shall have no difficulty whatever in identifying this symbol with the terrible convulsions of the French Revolution. It followed as a necessary consequence of the first. Voltaire and his coadjutors had insulted and trampled in the dust everything held sacred in human eyes, and this fully prepared the way for the scenes of terror that followed.