can analagously represent Him who
claims equality with God. Not one name or attribute peculiar to him is
mentioned in the description. Second. There are four horsemen brought to
view in this chapter, and the symbols all being drawn from the same
department, must have the same general application. If the first
horseman symbolizes _a definite personage_, so do the remaining three;
but we should have great difficulty in identifying the last three,
giving them an individual application.

Others make the first horseman a symbol of the gospel itself, but the
gospel is not a living, active, intelligent agent, such as the symbol
evidently is, but is only a system of the revealed truth. All congruity
and appropriateness in the comparison is lacking.

But let us give this symbol further consideration. It is not enough that
its interpretation alone be given, but the reader is justly entitled to
a knowledge of the process by which we arrive at the truth. In the first
place, we have a symbol of great dignity and excellence, and we must
look for an object of corresponding character. The symbol is that of a
living agent, and consequently, we must look for its fulfillment in an
active, intelligent agent. The purity, or whiteness, of the horse on
which the rider was seated would indicate an agency of mild, beneficent
character. Finally, the symbol is drawn, as before stated, from the
civil and military life of the Romans. Now, according to the laws of
symbolic language, a symbol never represents an object like itself, but
an analagous one in another department. A wild beast does not represent
a wild beast, but something of analagous character. Seven fat and seven
lean kine do not represent kine like themselves, but something
analagous--seven years of plenty and as many of famine. There are only
two great series of events described in the Revelation--the history of
ecclesiastical events and the political history of certain nations. The
present symbol is drawn from one of these departments--the political or
the civil life of the Romans; and leaving the latter department to find
its signification in another department, we have no place to go except
into the department of ecclesiastical affairs. Entering, therefore, the
spiritual realm, and looking about us for an object that perfectly meets
every requirement of the symbol, we find it in _the humble ministers of
Christ_, who boldly went forth in obedience to the divine command to
extend th