pagan Rome (Chap. xvi. 19), because Babylon is to be in existence at the time when the last plagues are poured out (Chap. xvii. 2); because no relations of the kind here spoken of existed between pagan Rome and those kings of the earth over whom, in the language of Alford, she rather “reigned with undisputed and crushing sway" (Chap. xviii. 2); because pagan Rome fell without having been reduced to the condition there described (Chap. xviii. 11, 19); because pagan Rome never was a great commercial city, or, if it be said that only her purchasing is referred to, because she did not cease to purchase even after her pagan condition came to an end. On the other hand, the words of Chapter xviii. 24, obviously founded on Matthew xxiii. 35, cannot be applied to pagan Rome.

Alive to the force of such considerations, or others of a similar kind, the tendency of later expositors has been to abandon the idea of pagan Rome, and to resort to that of another city, which they term the world-city of the last days; some indeed seeing such a city in all the great cities that have at any time directed persecution against the people of God, others confining it more strictly to a city yet to arise. The difficulties attending this interpretation are even greater than in the case of the former. The tone of the passages as a whole is unfavourable to the thought of any metropolis, whether of the past, the present, or the future. It is not the manner of the Apocalypse to symbolize by its emblems such material objects as a city, however huge its site, splendid its palaces, or wide its rule. The writer deals with spiritual truths; and to think that he would introduce this woman as a symbol of a city even far vaster than London, or Paris, or New York, is to lose sight of the spirit in which he writes. If it be urged that it is the dominion, not the stone and lime, of the city that he has in view, the extent of this dominion is fatal to the explanation. No such rule has belonged to any city either of ancient or

modern times; or, if the reply again be, that the city is not yet come, it is unnecessary to say more than that the existence of so great a city is, as yet at least, inconceivable, and that thus one of the most solemn and weighty parts of the Apocalypse has been for eighteen centuries without a meaning. In addition, the use of the word mystery," in Chapter xvii. 5, is at variance with the supposition. That word points at once to something spiritual, and cannot be applied to what is merely of the earth earthly. This interpretation, like the former, must be set aside.

The idea that we have before us in the woman papal Rome, either the Romish church or the papal spirit within that church, is of a different kind, and its fundamental principle may be accepted with little hesitation. The emblem employed leads directly to the idea of something connected with the Church. The woman is a "harlot"; and, with almost unvarying uniformity, that appellation and the sin of whoredom are ascribed in the Old Testament, not to heathen nations which had never enjoyed a special revelation of the Almighty's will, but only to those whom He had espoused to Himself, and who had proved faithless to their covenant relation to Him (Isa. i. 20; Jer. ii. 20, iii. 1, etc.). No more than two passages can be adduced to which this observation seems at first sight inapplicable (Isa. xxiii. 15–17; Nahum iii. 4), and these exceptions are probably more apparent than real. The mention of whoredom in what was obviously a symbolical sense immediately suggested to Jewish ears the sin of defection from a state of former privilege in God.

Again, the harlot here is so distinctly contrasted with the " woman of Chapter xii. and with the "bride the Lamb's wife" of Chapter xxi., that it is difficult, if not impossible, to resist the conviction that there must be a much closer resemblance between them than exists be

tween a woman and a city. Compared with the former, she is a woman; she is in a wilderness (Chap. xii. 14, xvii. 3); she is a mother (Chap. xii. 5, xvii. 5). Compared with the latter, she is introduced to us in almost precisely the same language (Chap. xvii. 1, xxi. 9); her garments suggest ideas which, however specifically different, belong to the same region of thought (Chap. xvii. 4, xix. 8); she has the name of a city, "Babylon," while the bride is named "New Jerusalem" (Chap. xvii. 5, xxi. 2); she persecutes while the saints are persecuted (Chap. xii. 13, xvii. 24); she makes all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, while the faithful are nourished by their Lord (Chap. xiv. 8, xii. 14); she has a name of guilt upon her forehead while the 144,000 have their Father's name written there (Chap. xvii. 5, xiv. 1). When we call to mind the large part played in the Apocalypse by the principle of contrasts, it is hardly possible to resist the conviction that the conditions associated with "Babylon " are best fulfilled if we behold in her a spiritual system opposed to and contrasted with the true Church of God.

We are led to this conclusion, also, by the fact that both Jerusalem and Babylon have the same designation, that of "the great city," given them. This epithet is applied in Chapter xi. 8 to a city which can be no other than Jerusalem, and the same remark may be made of Chapter xvi. 19. In six other passages the epithet is applied to Babylon (Chaps. xiv. 8, xviii. 10, 16, 18, 19, 21). The necessary inference is that there must be a sense in which Jerusalem is Babylon and Babylon Jerusalem. If it be not so, we shall have to contend, in the interpretation of the Apocalypse, with difficulties of a kind altogether different from those that generally meet us. Interpretation, indeed, will become impossible, because the same word, occurring in different places of the book, will have to be applied to totally different objects. No doubt

it may be urged that the two cities, Jerusalem and Babylon, have so little in common that it is unnatural to find in the latter a figure for the former. The objection is of little weight.

In the first place, it may be observed that the description of the fall of Babylon in this chapter is in all probability taken as much from the prophecy of Hosea (Chap. ii. 1-12) as from anything said expressly of that city in the Old Testament; and, as that prophecy applies to "the House of Israel," we have a proof that in the mind of the apocalyptic Seer there was a sense in which the Babylon of this chapter, and a particular aspect of Israel (and therefore, also, "Babylon" and "Jerusalem "), were closely associated with each other. Nor does it seem unworthy of notice that, at the moment when Hosea utters his warnings, he has before him the thought of a change of name, "Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi, for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God" (Chap. i. 9). The change of name might easily be transferred from the people to the city representing them; and, if so, no name would more naturally connect itself in the mind of St. John with the things spoken of in Chapter ii. of Hosea than that of Babylon.

In the second place, there is an aspect of Jerusalem which most closely resembles that aspect of Babylon for the sake of which the latter city is here peculiarly referred to. We cannot read the Fourth Gospel without seeing that, in the view of the Evangelist, there was a second Jerusalem to be added to the Jerusalem of old; that there was not only a Jerusalem "the city of God," the centre of a Divine Theocracy, but a Jerusalem representing a degenerate Theocracy, out of which Christ's people must be called in order that they may form his faithful Israel, a part of his "own flock." At this point, then, it would seem that we are mainly to seek the ground of the com

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parison between Jerusalem and Babylon. city God's people spent seventy years of captivity; and, at the end of that time, they were summoned out of it. Many of them obeyed the summons. They returned to their own land to settle under their vines and fig-trees, to rebuild their city and temple, and to enjoy the fulfilment of God's covenant promises. All this was repeated in the days of Christ. The leaders of the old Theocracy had become "thieves and robbers"; they had taken possession of the fold that they might "steal and kill and destroy;" it was necessary that Christ's sheep should listen to the Good Shepherd, and should leave the fold that they might find open pastures. Not only so. Repeated then, the same course of history shall be once more repeated. There shall again be a coming out of Christ's sheep from the fold which has for a time preserved them; and that fold shall be handed over to destruction. The probability is that this thought is to be traced even at Chapter xi. 8, where Jerusalem is "spiritually" called Sodom and Egypt. Not simply because of its sins did it receive these names, but because Sodom and Egypt afforded striking illustrations of the manner in which God summons his people out from among the wicked, Lot out of Sodom (Gen. xix. 12, 16, 17; Luke xvii. 28-32), Israel out of Egypt (Hosea xi. 1; Matt. ii. 15). Babylon, however, afforded the most striking illustration of such thoughts, and it thus became identified with the Jerusalem which we learn to know in the Fourth Gospel as the city of "the Jews." Out of that Jerusalem Christ's disciples are by his own lips exhorted to flee (Matt. xxiv. 15-20). The same command is given in the chapter of the Apocalypse which relates the fall of Babylon (Chap. xviii. 4).

On these grounds it appears to us that there need be no hesitation in so far adopting the interpretation of those who