mental maladies. Therefore the results symbolized
must be noxious principles and opinions, which fill the mind with rancor
and hate,--producing strife, alienation and contention.

The _epoch_ here symbolized, in the very unanimous opinion of most
judicious writers, corresponds with the commencement of the agitations
which preceded the outbreak of the first French revolution, about A. D.
1785. Commencing in France, and extending with more or less virulence
throughout the ten kingdoms, there was excited an intense uneasiness of
the people respecting their relation to their rulers. They regarded
themselves as insupportably oppressed and degraded, and were exasperated
to madness against their respective governments. This, under the next
vial, resulted in the overthrow of the French monarchy, and in attempted
revolutions in other kingdoms.

The Second Vial.

"And the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea; and it
became like the blood of a dead person; and every living creature
in the sea died." Rev. 16:8.

The first vial having excited political agitations in previously quiet
governments, they are now more fitly symbolized by the "sea" than by the
"earth." And on such the second vial is poured.

As the sea symbolizes a people agitated and disquieted, the living things
in it, must symbolize those who live on and are sustained by the people.
Consequently, the waters becoming blood, and the death of the things
living in the waters, symbolize the shedding of the blood of the people,
and the slaughter, by them, of their rulers and superiors.

The epoch symbolized, would therefore correspond with the actual outbreak
of the French revolution, to which the agitations produced by the previous
vial had goaded on the excited people. In their riots and insurrections,
history records the destruction of large numbers of the populace; and
these exterminated the members of the royal family, and all persons of
rank and influence. A million of people, according to Alison, perished in
the civil war of La Vendee alone; and thousands of the nobility and
persons of distinction were ruthlessly slaughtered throughout France,
whose rivers were discolored with the blood of the slain.

The Third Vial.

"And the third poured out his bowl on the rivers and on the
fountains of waters; and they became blood. And I heard the angel
of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Thou, who art, and wast
h