V, there is no created intelligence in God's great
universe that can be chosen to represent, in his true, essential
divinity, Him who does not deem it robbery to claim equality with God.
There may, likewise, be certain symbols connected with his person to
give us at least a faint impression of his divine character and infinite
majesty; yet when he appears upon the symbolic scene, he distinctly
announces, "I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was
dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore." "He hath on his vesture and
on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS." So
whenever the divine Christ appears on the symbolic scene, he comes in
his own person, proclaiming his own name, and we need look for no symbol
of him.

Upon the opening of the fifth seal, the souls of the martyrs are
represented as crying unto God from the altar for the avenging of their
blood on those who dwell on the earth. Where is there an object in all
creation analagous to a disembodied spirit? None can be found. It is
easy to give them an arbitrary name; therefore they appear in the
Revelation under their own appropriate title, as "the _souls_ of them
that were slain." Chap. 6:9, 10, also 20:4.

This exception applies to every case where no corresponding object can
be selected as a symbol. Where the nature of the subject forbids its
symbolization, there the description must of necessity be literal, and
all such objects appear under their own appropriate titles. Otherwise,
we are to look upon the entire book of Revelation as a vast collection
of symbols whose interpretation is to be found, not in the department
from which they are taken, but in another, to which they bear a certain
analagous resemblance.

Although not pertaining strictly to the subject of symbolic language,
yet a word respecting the plan of the prophecy will be appropriate at
this time. The prophetic events are not arranged after the ordinary plan
of histories, narrating all the contemporaneous events in a given
period, whether civil, religious, literary, scientific, or biographical,
thus finishing up the history of that period; but it consists of a
number of distinct themes running over the same ground. The proof of
this assertion will appear as we proceed with the development of the
prophecies.

May the wisdom of heaven direct us in the perusal of this wonderful book
of Revelation, and may we at last be "accounted worthy to obtain that
world," a