means power and wealth.  What shall become of it?  Russia early formed designs of conquest....  The empress Catherine ... had a grand scheme for a restoration of the Greek empire under a Russian prince.  Alexander I., at Tilsit, planned a partition of the Ottoman empire with Napoleon, but the latter declined to see Constantinople in Russian hands.  ‘Constantinople,’ said he, ‘is the empire of the world.’  In 1844 Nicholas visited England and made guarded suggestions to the prime-minister about the Turkish lands.  The Ottoman empire, said he, was a sick man, nearly at the last extremity....  England declined to plan for a share of the inheritance, and nothing was done.  In 1853 Nicholas resumed the subject with the British ambassador at St. Petersburg.  The sick man, he now held, was at the point of death....  But again England declined and, indeed, the next year went to war with Russia to save the sick man from a premature end at the hands of the would-be administrator of the estate.  Another power doubly interested in the future of the Turkish dominions is Austria.  That empire has been the traditional enemy of the Turk, and at the end of the seventeenth century was the actual bulwark of Europe against Mohammedan conquest.  When the tide of war rolled the other way, Austria was ready to share in the spoils.  Twice near the end of the eighteenth century, was an alliance made between Russia and Austria for the partition of Turkey,” etc.  Pp. 270, 271.  Thus, we find that these designs of nations for the overthrow of Turkey have so far been overruled; for God will not allow that power to come to “a premature end.”

CHAPTER X.

    And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed
    with a cloud:  and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was
    as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: 

    2.  And he had in his hand a little book open:  and he set his
    right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,

    3.  And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth:  and when
    he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.

4.  And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write:  and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.

    5.  And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the
    earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

6.  And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: 

    7.  But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he
    shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as
    he hath declared to his servants the prophets.