is here chiefly intended is, to “sound an alarm.” (Joel ii. 1; 1 Cor. xiv. 8).  Whilst all is suspense, and before the silence is broken by the sounding of the first trumpet, the worship of God is exemplified after the usual manner.  An angel, by his official place and work easily distinguished from those having the trumpets, holds in his hand a “golden censer” that with “much incense” he might render acceptable “the prayers of all saints.”  As the angel who had the “seal of the living God,” is distinguished from those that “held the winds,” (ch. vii. 1;) so is he here, from those that had the trumpets.  Here he appears as the Great High Priest over the house of God; and as “the whole multitude of the people were praying without, at the time of incense;” (Luke i. 10;) so the service of God is thus emblematically represented as conducted according to divine appointment.  This Angel therefore is Christ himself.  “No man cometh unto the Father but by him.”  He is the only Advocate with the Father; and through him “we have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” (Eph. ii. 18.)

May we not inquire, without presumption, a little into the nature or purport of the “prayers of all saints” at this time of ominous silence?  And what could so likely be the burden of their petitions as that of the cry of the souls under the altar, namely, the destruction of the Roman empire?  Surely this has been the prayer of God’s persecuted servants in all ages:—­“Pour out thy fury upon the heathen,” etc. (Jer. x. 25; Ps. lxxix. 6).  However inconsistent with Christian charity superficial Christians may deem the law of retaliation; we shall find it often urged on our attention as exemplified in this book.  It is absolutely essential to the divine government.

5.  And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth:  and there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake.

V. 5—­The Lord Jesus, in carrying out the designs of the divine mind, and executing the commission which he received from the Father as Mediator, appears in various characters.  Whilst as a priest he intercedes for his people, and by the incense from the golden censer renders their prayers acceptable before God; as a king he answers their prayers by terrible things in righteousness. (Ps. lxv. 5).  This work of vengeance is vividly signified by scattering coals of fire on the earth.

From the very same altar, whence the glorious Angel of the Covenant had received fire to consume the incense, he next takes coals, the symbol of his wrath, and scatters them into the earth.  These “burning coals of juniper” produce “voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.”  “O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places.” (Ps. lxviii. 35; lxxvi. 12).  “The Lord our God is a jealous God.”  Our merciful Saviour once put a strange and startling question to his disciples:—­“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth?  I tell you, Nay.”—­For