at was uttered by the angel of the tenth
chapter, is not revealed; but the fall of Babylon being announced in the
eighteenth, it follows that it was the subject of the angel's utterance in
the tenth.

As the messenger of the tenth chapter appears subsequent to the sixth, and
before the seventh trumpet; and as, after this epoch, there were to be
prophesyings "_again_, before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and
kings" (10:11), it follows that the _time_ then symbolized must be at an
epoch _anterior_ to the end of the world. A corresponding reason--namely,
the command to come out of Babylon, and the fulfilment of her plagues and
sorrows, which are to intervene between the cry of the angel announcing
her fall and the time of her actual destruction--proves that the mighty
angel of the 18th of Revelation must also be at an _epoch_ having a
considerable period between it and the end.

It follows, that when John saw the angel of the eighteenth chapter, and
"the earth was lightened with his glory," it did not symbolize a _literal_
but a _moral_ light,--_the light of truth_. And as the enlightening of the
earth by its promulgation, pre-supposes a previous state of corresponding
moral _darkness_, it must, as in the tenth chapter, symbolize an _epoch_,
prominent in the history of the world, as a time when the _darkness_ of
ignorance, error and superstition, began rapidly to disappear before the
spread of the _light_ of truth and knowledge.

These considerations point to the epoch of the REFORMATION, when the
midnight _darkness_ of the _dark ages_ began to be scattered before the
uprising and onward progress of truth and knowledge. Then appeared a body
of religious teachers, aided by the newly discovered art of printing, who
so brought the Scriptures out from their obscurity, opposed the
pretensions of the Papal hierarchy, and, by the clear teachings of the
word, so secured the spread of gospel light and liberty, that they might
appropriately be symbolized by an angel coming down from heaven, and
enlightening the earth with his glory. The descent from heaven would
symbolize the heavenly origin of the doctrines promulgated. His mighty
power, and the strong voice with which he proclaimed his cry, would
symbolize the greatness and earnestness of the movement, and the mighty
results to be effected by it. This symbolization, twice given, could only
be fulfilled by some great and mighty movement, like the Reformation.

The fall