onceal themselves in the
provinces of Africa. Their numerous congregations, both in the cities and
country, were deprived of the rights of citizens, and of the exercise of
religious worship."

The Second Trumpet.

"And the second angel sounded, and it was as if a great mountain
burning with fire were cast into the sea: and the third part of
the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures in the
sea, and having life, died; and the third part of the ships was
destroyed."--Rev. 8:8, 9.

A mountain differs from a tornado, and must symbolize a compact, organized
body of invaders. Its being of a volcanic nature, renders it so much the
more terrible and destructive.

As waters symbolize "peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues," the sea
into which the mountain is cast, is a people already agitated by previous
commotions.

The ships and fish in the sea, must necessarily symbolize agents
sustaining a relation to the Roman Sea, analogous to the relation of such
to the literal sea. They are those who live upon, and are supported by,
the people:--the rulers and the officers of state.

The symbol of a burning mountain fitly represents the armed invaders under
Genseric. In the year 429, with fifty thousand effective men he landed on
the shores of Africa, established an independent government in that part
of the Roman empire, and from thence, harassed the southern shores of
Europe and the intermediate islands, by perpetual incursions. Says
Gibbon:--"The Vandals, who, in twenty years, had penetrated from the Elbe
to Mount Atlas, were united under the command of their warlike king; and
he reigned with equal authority over the Alarici, who had passed within
the term of human life, from the cold of Scythia, to the excessive heat of
an African climate.

"The Vandals and Alarici, who followed the successful standard of
Genseric, had acquired a rich and fertile territory, which stretched along
the coast from Tangiers to Tripoli; but their narrow limits were pressed
and confined on either side by the sandy desert and the Mediterranean. The
discovery and conquest of the black nations that might dwell beneath the
torrid zone, could not tempt the rational ambition of Genseric; but he
cast his eyes towards the sea; he resolved to create a new naval power,
and his bold enterprise was executed with steady and active perseverance.
The woods of Mount Atlas afforded an inexhaustible nursery of timber; hi