re.

9. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the
name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they
repented not to give him glory.

The sun is the great central luminary of the earth, under whose genial
light and warmth everything rejoices and develops in forms of beauty.
When, however, a scorching power is given to his rays, the earth becomes
as a furnace in which every green thing is burnt up. What the sun is to
this world, such are the ruling powers to a kingdom; and power being
given them to scorch as with fire denotes that the government would be
administered, not for the good of the people, but for the purpose of
oppression. A scorching sun, therefore, is a proper symbol of tyrant
rulers.

Still keeping in view the object of God in sending these first
plagues--the punishment of the nations embraced within the territory of
the ten former kingdoms of Europe--we are directed with certainty to the
next great scourge that followed as a result of those already
developed--the almost universal military empire of Napoleon. The success
of three of the four greatest military leaders the world has ever
seen--Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne--has been so clearly predicted
by inspiration that no believer in the truth of Revelation attempts to
deny it; therefore it is not surprising that the fourth--Napoleon--
should also be assigned a place in Apocalyptic vision: not so much
because of his all-powerful military genius merely, but because of his
mighty influence and effects upon the very nations that were especially
made the subject of prophecy, as they stand connected with the history
of God's people for centuries. At the close of the Revolution the French
nation had not virtue nor religion necessary to remedy the evils under
which they had long been suffering from the oppression of their
monarchs; for when they undertook the work and demolished the throne,
they let loose all the wildest elements of wrath to rage without
restraint. The nation rejected God, and God rejected the nation. He gave
them up to their own madness, to the fury of the most atrocious
wickedness that was ever developed under heaven. "From the wild excesses
and intolerable calamities of blood-red republicanism, the people were
rejoiced at length to find a refuge in a gigantic military despotism,
which became the terror and scourge of Europe." But the hand of God was
in this thing, also. When the sun scorches the ear