lapse of a thousand years, been assaulted by the barbarians of the East and West, but never till this fatal hour had the Greeks been surrounded, both in Asia and Europe, by the arms of the same hostile monarchy. Yet the prudence or generosity of Amurath postponed for a while this easy conquest, and his pride was satisfied with the frequent and humble attendance of the emperor, John Palæologus, and his four sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the Ottoman prince. He marched against the Sclavonian nations between the Danube and the Adriatic, the Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians, and Albanians; and those warlike tribes who had so often insulted the majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by his destructive inroads."*

"The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is strongly expressed in his surname of Ilderim, or the lightning; and he might glory in an epithet which was drawn from the fiery energy of his soul, and the rapidity of his destructive march. In the fourteen years of his reign, he incessantly moved at the head of his armies, from Boursa to Adrianople, from the Danube to the Euphrates; and though he strenuously laboured for the propagation of the law, he invaded, with impartial ambition, the Christian and Mahometan princes of Europe and Asia. From Angora and Amasia to Erzeroum, the northern regions of Anatolia were reduced to his obedience; he stripped of their hereditary possessions his brother emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, of Aidin and Sarukham; and after the conquest of Iconium, THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF THE SELJUKIANS AGAIN REVIVED IN THE OTTOMAN DYNASTY. Nor were the conquests of Bajazet less rapid or important in Europe. No sooner had he imposed a regular form of servitude on the Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed the Danube to seek new enemies and new subjects in the heart of Moldavia. Whatever yet adhered to the Greek Empire in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master; an obsequious bishop led him through the Straits of Thermopyla into Greece. The humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness, and Bajazet condescended to accept the patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamalukes, a last and frivolous homage, that was yielded by force to opinion by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abas, and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving

* Gibbon's Hist. vol. xi. p. 445.

this august title, and he turned his arms against the kingdom of Hungary, the perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats. Sigismond, the Hungarian king, was the son and brother of the emperors of the West; his cause was that of Europe and THE CHURCH; and on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of France and Germany were eager to march under his standard and that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a confederate army of a hundred thousand Christians, who had proudly boasted, that if the sky should fall they could uphold it on their lances. The far greater part were slain or driven into the Danube, and Sigismond, escaping to Constantinople by the river and the Black Sea, returned, after a long circuit, to his exhausted kingdom. In the pride of victory, Bajazet threatened that he would besiege Buda, that he would subdue the adjacent countries of Germany and Italy, and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter's at Rome."

The Seljukian kingdom was revived; the four sultanies into which it was divided were loosed; and conqueror after conqueror appeared, to maintain, with the savage myriads that accompanied them, the character of a woe on idolatrous Christendom, which in their proud boasting they contemptuously defied, and threatened with ignominious and entire extermination.

The four angels, thus numbered, identified with a special region, bound and loosed again, were also PREPARED for a measured and allotted time.

And the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. Ver. 15.

History would be altogether indefinite if dates were not given, and periods or eras marked. It therefore abounds with dates, wherever minute accuracy is attained or even attempted. And prophecy, which is a divine record of the things that were to be, has also its dates or the defined limits of its periods, as well as any record of the past, such as alone can be penned

* Gibbon's Hist. pp. 447-450.

by the hand of man. All things are possible with God, and unto him all things are known. In the sight of the Eternal futurity has no distance, and darkness no shade. He who has the times and the seasons in his own power can reveal them as he pleases; his ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts; and he with whom a thousand years is as one day, and one day as a thousand years, reckons not of events or of time that is to come, as men, when they seek to tell of what has been, who search for documents and pry into facts, and after all their labour, are often perplexed with discordant testimony, and can only give a learned guess at the truth. To compute and adjust the periods of history, and fix dates to events with certainty, is often the most difficult task of the historian. But futurity is not less open and manifest to an all-seeing eye, though human vision may be strained in vain, while it tries long to discern clearly the things that are past. The darkness rests only with us; with Him who dwelleth in the light there is no darkness at all, and the dictates of inspiration are not to be made chargeable with the defects either of human wisdom, which is often foolishness, or of human testimony, which is often indistinct and incomplete. As the record of past events must be appealed to in order to illustrate the fulfilment of the corresponding prediction, history must first do its part before it can be shewn that Revelation is not perfect in hers. Whenever that is first done, there is no reason then why those who read the revelation of Jesus Christ should give heed any more to the common admonition, scarcely savouring even of a little faith, "not to meddle with dates." Till the past be precisely ascertained, and also till the great scheme which involves the history of the world, be laid open by the revolution of events, in its chief bearings, to our view, the periods of prophecy

must rest for a season in kindred obscurity with those of history, and, from the darkness that is in us, the subject may long be involved in doubt, of which time and truth can alone disencumber the mind. Scripture is a rule of faith, and not a signal for warfare, except against spiritual enemies; and the very incompetency of man to solve such difficulties, for a season, may, for aught we yet can see, and coherent as the whole of Revelation is, be a wise ordination of him with whom wisdom dwelleth, lest men should have sought to be furnished by his word with works that are not good, and think that their helping hand should be needed at the time for the execution of his purposes, while at length the dates may be so manifest and the truth so plain, that he who runneth may read. Such, we apprehend, is the easy solution of the question before us, now that Mahometanism visibly verges to its close, and that the sum of its history may be seen in a single view. Of that history this specific period may be reckoned as the key-stone, and if once it be fixed, the passage may be easy over one of the prophetic arches of time.

It is worthy of the reader's observation, if it be not indeed obvious, that the four angels were PREPARED for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men; and in looking to the word of God, and not to any human interpretation, it is evidently the period of PREPARATION which is here designated, rather than the time which intervened from the loosing of the Turks to the height of their conquests, or the commencement of their fall. It is not said either that they were loosed, or that they were to slay, during the appointed and limited time, or that they were loosed in order that they might slay, but it is expressly said, (and the significancy of this or of any other term has not to be overlooked,) that they were prepared for a specified time, and for

the accomplishment of a specified object, for an hour, &c. for to slay the third part of men. The command also was given to "loose the four angels which are prepared," words which directly imply that the time of preparation had begun before the time of loosing.

The period and the purpose for which they were prepared have also to be specially marked. The usual mode of the computation of prophetic time has not here to be departed from; and it never has been questioned that it has to be reckoned by the simple scriptural rule, "each day for a year." The very annunciation of the terms by which the period is measured, implies the utmost minuteness, and clearly limits the period of several centuries to a prophetic hour, or within the space of fifteen days.

All commentators, though espousing different theories, seem to be agreed that the day denotes a year, the month thirty years, and that an hour, the twentyfourth part of a day, is equivalent to the twentyfourth part of a year, or fifteen days.

But on the assumption that the prophetic periods of a time, times, and half a time—of one thousand two hundred and threescore years, and also that of fortytwo months, all refer to the same event, and mark the same time, three hundred and sixty years (three times and a half, being thus 1260 years) has been sometimes adopted, as also the measure of the year. The term year, however, occurs in this instance alone; and is thereby, as if not without design, distinguished from all these prophetic periods. And it may afterwards appear, that the forty-two months have a different application, and form the measure of a different period than the time, times, and a half; and consequently that the natural year, as specially and peculiarly designated, has here to be adopted, without reference to any other prophetic period, measured solely either by times or months.