aspect[1] than the others,—much, though, containing the scene and object of them. In the twelfth verse of the succeeding chapter, after Satan is cast down, woe is pronounced on the inhabiters of the earth, who were the former objects of the woes; and also, then, on those of the sea. Now it is true this does not come in, in proper historical continuity: but the expression of the woe there had been reserved; here, all are concerned in it under heaven.
The nineteenth verse of chap. xi. should, I think, though a connecting one, more properly begin the twelfth chapter. Looking at the chapters as continuous, it is the direct manifest agency of heaven upon earth, the connection of the two. It is not now a seal, opened by one who alone could do it, but the temple opened; “and there was seen,” &c.
The first thing seen, was the secure and unchanging witness of God’s covenant mercy, on which all his thoughts and purposes were bent. After the sounding of the seventh trumpet, all the relationships of things, and their real principles and sources, came out. If we look at the eighteenth verse of chap. xi. as closing generally, as it does,—then the twelfth takes back the Church to see, abstractedly, the principles and sources of all the
- ↑ At least is connected with a wider scope of results.
