y. This indicates punishment to be inflicted upon men for
corrupting the gospel, similar to the judgment of fire from the "golden
censer," (ch. viii. 5.) The effects of the first woe may be supposed to
reach from the early part of the seventh century to the latter part of
the thirteenth,--the period of Arabian locusts. During the latter part
of this time, the Turks were held in check by the Crusaders, who strove
to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels. The "four angels" are the four
Turkish Sultanies. The river Euphrates is to be taken in this place
literally, as designating the geographical locality of these combined
powers, which were the instruments employed by the enthroned Mediator,
to demolish the remaining part of the Roman empire,--"the third part of
men." The time occupied in this barbarous work of slaughter is "an hour,
a day, a month and a year," about equal to 391 years; or from the year
1281 to 1672. The Western empire had been overthrown by the first four
trumpets, the Eastern nearly ruined under the fifth; and under the sixth
it was finally subverted. The numbers which the Turks brought into the
field are here said to be "two hundred thousand thousand,"--a definite
for an indefinite number as usual, a vast army. And historians tell us
that they were, in fact, from four to seven hundred thousand, and a
large proportion of them cavalry.

From the year 1672, one of their own historians dates the "Decay of the
Othman empire!" Since that date, the Turkish power is well known to have
been straitened by the Russian empire.

These eastern warriors and their horses are described by their military
costume and their arms. Fire is _red_, jacinth _blue_, and brimstone
_yellow_,--the chosen colors of the Ottoman warriors, their military
uniform. The heads of their horses "as the heads of lions," denote
strength, fierceness and cruelty. "Fire, smoke and brimstone issuing out
of their mouths," may be supposed to indicate the employment of
gunpowder, first invented about that time, as an element of destruction.
The commander at the siege of Constantinople is said to have employed
cannon, some of which were of such caliber as to send stones of three
hundred pounds weight! Thus their power was in their "mouth:" but like
the locusts, "they had in their tails power to do hurt,"--the deadly
poison of the Koran. The Turks left behind them wherever they went, as
the Saracens had done before, the poisonous and ruinous religion o