1. _The Judgments of God. Vision of the Vials._――The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters need not detain us long, inasmuch as the resemblance between them and the visions of the trumpets is so great that much of what might be said has already been anticipated. Vials, or basins rather, were vessels used in the Mosaic ritual as receptacles. The term is used here to designate the judgments which must fall on men if the warnings and messages symbolized by the trumpets are unheeded. The Gospel, we are told by St. Paul, may be a savor of death unto death, as well as of life unto life. The words of the Lord Jesus will either become spirit and life to us, or they will judge us at the last day. From “the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony” “seven angels” are seen issuing forth with vials containing “the seven last plagues.” The word for “plague” is the same used in chapter xiii, 3. It was there applied to a temporary wound which was quickly healed. Its connection here with the word “last” and with the number “seven” indicates that the wounds or blows are final and incurable. The judgments are not corrective and disciplinary, but retributive and irreversible. The angels with the plagues issue from the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony. This name is that which is applied to the structure Moses erected in the wilderness and which contained the ark of the testimony. Its use here implies that the judgments that follow are to be found recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. The old word is God’s faithful witness, bearing plain testimony to his righteousness and to his anger at sin and iniquity. Still further, it was one of the four beasts, or living creatures, who put the vials into the hands of the angels; and, as the four beasts are supposed to be symbolical representations of the animate creation, the truth declared would seem to be that these judgments come as natural providences, or by the operation of laws which the divine Being has stamped on his creation. The plagues fall successively upon the same places that are named in the parallel vision of the trumpets――the first upon the earth; the second, upon the sea; the third, upon the rivers and fountains of waters; the fourth, upon the sun; the fifth, upon the throne of the beast, darkening his kingdom; the sixth, upon the Euphrates. It is very instructive to contrast these judgments with the beautiful figures by which John, in the last chapters of the Revelation, seeks to portray the glorious privileges and blessings of the perfected kingdom of Christ. Thus, in opposition to the “noisome and grievous sore” that fell “upon the men which had the mark of the beast,” we have, in chapter xxii, 2, the declaration that “the leaves of the tree” of life “were for the healing of the nations.” In opposition to “the sea” which “became as the blood of a dead man,” we are told, in chapter xxi, 1, that “there was no more sea.”