close, it may not be out of place to present a note of his public services in this town, as they recur to my memory.

The late Doctor was a prominent member of the local Working Men's Association, of which he was always either the president for the year or a director. He regularly attended the lectures, taking his turn with the local clergymen in the opening and closing of the meeting. In addition to securing for lecturers such friends as Rev. Dr. Wylie and Rev. Messrs. Smellie and Gardiner, he likewise went at times to the desk, his last lecture being on "Nineveh and its Lessons."

Dr. Blakely was also president at one time of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society, his lecture to whom, in the Wesleyan Church, drew a large and appreciative audience. He presided likewise over the Penny Savings Bank, the importance of which institution may be indicated by the fact that its deposits exceed £400.

Of the Industrial Schools and the Town Mission he was a leading director. He devoted a considerable portion of his time to the Schools. In addition to periodical examination of the children, and attending their social meetings, he spoke often in their behalf at the public meetings of their directors and friends, held annually in the month of March. In his last appearance thereat he appealed earnestly to all the churches to look after the young, on whose mental, moral, and religious culture the future of the country would depend. At the annual meeting of the Town Mission in September, 1866—a meeting at which his excellent friend, Rev. D. Cunningham of the Free Church, now also numbered among the departed, was presentthe Doctor spoke with more than his usual intensity of feeling; his remarks having reference to the great want of personal faith, and the never-ending conflict between good and evil.

These reminiscences show that Dr. Blakely, though a keen and often hostile observer of the signs of the times, was not a cynic, much less a misanthrope, and could with alacrity leave for a time his own church circle, and co-operate with other earnest spirits in the cause of social and religious advancement. They also illustrate his own working plan, which I heard him explain at a soiree in the village of Auchinairn-viz., that his rest consisted mainly in a change of employment. If he were tired writing, he either took up a book, or visited a sick friend, or went, as occasion arose, on the platform before a public meeting. Hence the secret of his literary labours and pastoral acceptability. "Dining out" he sedulously avoided, because it absorbed valuable time.

The Doctor was a tower of strength and aid to several young men, now ministers of the Original Secession Church, whom I am glad to

reckon among my own friends. When I once met two of these in the O. S. manse, he did not monopolise the conversation, as by his experience and learning he was well entitled to do, but preferred to listen, and, as it were, to give free play to the mental strength of his young guests.

Of his pulpit ministrations it becomes me to say little. dently studied hard for them, and was the very antithesis of

"The things that mount the rostrum with a skip,
And then skip down again, pronounce a text,
Cry hem! and reading what they never wrote,
Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,

He evi

And with a well-bred whisper close the scene."-Cowper's Task.

His Sabbath evening services were often advertised to the general public, and included lectures on the plagues of Egypt and the Book of Jonah. As a visitor of the sick he was indefatigable, and frequently I met him at the bedside of his own hearers and other friends.

Now that it has pleased the Master in His inscrutable providence to take him home, Dr. Blakely is missed in Kirkintilloch as a catholic co-operator in all good works; and though praise to the dead be cheap, the present generation in the town sincerely feel, I think, that in him they had "the assurance of a man." God grant that his mantle may fall on a worthy successor.-I am, Sirs, yours respectfully, W. WHITELAW, M.D.

Literature.

The Seventh Vial, or the Past and Present of Papal Europe, as shown in the Apocalypse. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D. New and Cheap Edition. Revised and greatly Enlarged. Edinburgh: A. Elliot.

THE study of unfulfilled prophecy should on many accounts be felt to be an attractive one. It gratifies the desire which all men have to look behind the dark veil that hangs before the future. It meets especially the longing which good men have to know the future of God's Church-the longing which prompted the cry of Daniel, "O, my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?"—the longing which made John weep much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book," in which were written the future purposes of Him that sat on the throne. And when we think of the condescending grace of the great God in disclosing to us creatures of a day His everlasting plans; when we think of the beneficent design of the revelation, even to cheer the Church in her long dark night of conflict and trial,

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by throwing forward on her path the light of her predestined triumph and glory; when we think that each fulfilled prophecy is another seal of Heaven set on the truth of Christianity, imparting fresh strength and boldness to faith, and casting darker confusion on the hosts of infidelity; when we think of the special benediction which, in the opening of the Apocalypse, Christ pronounces on the man who attentively studies it—“ Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy;" when we bring into view considerations like these, it seems strange that Christ should have given so large a place in His Word to the sublime visions of prophecy, and that the most of Christians should so much neglect them.

For this neglect various causes may be assigned. When vital religion is in a low state there is a decline of large-hearted zeal on the part of those who profess it, and if they only know as much as is likely to secure their personal salvation, they care little about the public interests of the Church of Christ, whether in the way of maintaining her attainments in the past, or inquiring into her prospects for the future. It must be admitted, too, that much discredit has been cast on the study of unfulfilled prophecy, by the rash and fanciful and hopelessly conflicting views of its meaning, given by not a few of its professed expositors, who have sought to its oracle, rather to find support to their own fantastic theories than to inquire reverently" what saith the Lord; " while the seeming darkness and strangeness of its symbols-the fancied impossibility of deciphering with certainty its mysterious hieroglyphics—has deterred many from attempting to find that key to unlock their meaning, which God has furnished in other parts of Scripture, and which may easily be found by all who are at pains to search for it.

If any of our readers have been prejudiced against the study of prophecy on the two latter grounds, we know of few things more likely to cure them of the prejudice than the perusal of "The Seventh Vial." Dr. Wylie has qualifications for the exposition of prophecy such as meet in few. He has long and ardently studied the subject. Perhaps no other man in this country is so familiar with Popery, the great and central subject of later prophecy. Then he has a singularly large and firm grasp of those great moral principles, which are the only clue to guide one through the involved mazes of the great Providential plan, whether it be disclosed in the visions of prophecy or in the facts of history. Nor can we omit to mention his power of vivid and pictorial illustration, which enables him to preserve much of the colouring of the prophetic symbol in his exposition of its meaning and fulfilment.

Though called "The Seventh Vial," the present work embraces a

concise but perfectly luminous exposition of the book of Revelation, from the fourth to the nineteenth chapters inclusive. But as the name leads us to expect, attention is chiefly fixed upon the view given in the mystic record, of the rise, the culmination, and the decline of the great Papal Apostacy, of which the judgment of the seventh vial. is to be the final and tremendous overthrow. No one can read it through with ordinary attention, without acquiring a very definite and comprehensive notion, both of the plan and meaning of the Apocalypse, and of the system of Popery which it mainly unfolds. And so powerful is the interest of the subject, so clear and graphic and eloquent is the style, that we venture to say few will begin to read it, who will not feel constrained to read it through. We know of no work better fitted to popularise the study of prophecy, hitherto so much and so culpably neglected.

In this second edition the work has been considerably altered, and on the whole, to our mind improved. We have, however, marked one or two alterations, which we can hardly accept as improvements. One of these has reference to the meaning of the "four living creatures," which John saw "in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne." Dr. Wylie now looks upon these as symbolic of "all created agencies -as "the ministries which God has called into existence, and by which He carries on His government-the Angelic, the Human, the Animal, and the Physical." This view, which is substantially that taken by Alford and some German commentators, is surely far from satisfactory. Can we suppose the representatives of mere creature-existence to occupy a place nearer the throne of God and the Lamb than "the four-and-twenty elders," who, all admit, represent the Church of the Redeemed? The context shows that these living creatures join with the four-and-twenty elders in the "new song" in praise of the Lamb, saying, "Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood." Can we suppose the representatives of the Angelic, the Animal, and Physical creation joining in that song?——a song which plainly implies that all who join in it are sinners redeemed by Christ's atoning blood. And how can we suppose the Angelic creation to be included in the symbol when we observe that, as the vision unfolds itself, the angels appear as a separate company, outside the inner circle of the redeemed, and uniting in another and more general anthem of praise? The living creatures are undoubtedly redeemed men, and we have seen no explanation of them which so much satisfies us, as that adopted by Dr. Wylie himself, in the first edition of this work-namely, that they symbolise the Gospel ministry, whose official gifts are fitly indicated by the attributes of these creatures, and whose high official position

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as the ambassadors of Christ, places them nearer His throne than the members of the Church to whom they minister.

We could have wished also that Dr. Wylie had adhered to the view, taken in the first edition, that the seven-headed beast which John saw rising out of the sea is the Roman Empire in its secular form, as existing under the Papacy. There are statements which seem to imply that he takes the same view still, but the reader gets somewhat confused and embarrassed when, at p. 131, he finds the author, for the purpose of solving an admitted difficulty as to the seventh head of the beast, interpreting the beast to mean the idolatrous kingdom of Satan, as it has existed in the world from the beginning, and as it has culminated at different periods in the seven great empires that have successively ruled the earth-the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, the Pagan Roman, and the Papal Roman. This interpretation is ingenious and striking in its boldness and grasp, but there are various considerations which we think justify exception to it. It destroys the identity hitherto supposed, on good grounds, to exist between the seven-headed beast of John and the fourth beast of Daniel; which latter is almost universally understood by Protestant expositors to symbolize the Roman Empire, and, as the fourth beast of a series, cannot possibly include the idolatrous empires which preceded it. Then again we cannot reconcile it with the inspired interpretation of the symbol given in Rev. xvii. 9, 10, which plainly limits the seat of the power represented by the beast to a locality marked by "seven mountains," and to Rome therefore, the city of the seven hills. In the words of Elliot, quoted by Dr. Wylie himself, though he does not answer them

"It binds the power symbolized through all its various mutations from its earliest beginning to its end, to that same seven-hilled locality, even like one adscriptum glebae, and as an essential part of his very constitution and life."

It is, however, in the latter and leading part of the work, which relates to the winding up of the great Apocalyptic drama, that the chief interest centres. Many will be eager to know what, in the reckoning of one so competent to judge, is the point on the great dial of prophecy on which the shadow is presently falling. In 1848, when Europe was rocking in the earthquake of revolution; when the heads of Papal dynasties were either being discrowned, or forced to give free constitutions to their subjects; when the Pope himself was fleeing from Rome disguised in the livery of a lacquey, we do not think it surprising that our author, like many others, should have taken such a great and wide-spread convulsion to be the beginning of the outpouring of the seventh vial. The sudden reaction, however, which