Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." And so complete was the destruction of that great city that even its site was forgotten and was for a long time uncertain.

Such was the typical city; and, like a great millstone cast into the sea, it was sunken centuries ago, never again to rise: even the memory of it has become a reproach and a byword. Now let us look for its antitype, first observing that the Scriptures clearly point it out, and then noting the aptness of the symbolism.

In symbolic prophecy a "city" signifies a religious gov. ernment backed by power and influence. Thus, for instance, the "holy city, the new Jerusalem," is the symbol used to represent the established Kingdom of God, the overcomers of the Gospel Church exalted and reigning in glory. The Church is also, and in the same connection, represented as a woman, "the bride, the Lamb's wife," in power and glory, and backed by the power and authority of Christ, her husband. "And there came unto me one of the seven angels... saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. And he . . . showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem."-Rev. 21:9, 10.

This same method of interpretation applies to mystical Babylon, the great ecclesiastical kingdom, "that great city" (Rev. 17:1-6), which is described as a harlot, a fallen woman (an apostate church;-for the true Church is a virgin), exalted to power and dominion, and backed, to a considerable degree, by the kings of the earth, the civil powers, which are all more or less intoxicated with her spirit and doctrine. The apostate church lost her virgin purity. Instead of waiting, as an espoused and chaste virgin, for exaltation with the heavenly Bridegroom, she associated herself with the kings of the earth and prostituted her virgin

purity-both of doctrine and character-to suit the world's ideas; and in return she received, and now to some extent exercises, a present dominion, in large measure by their support, direct and indirect. This unfaithfulness to the Lord, whose name she claims, and to her high privilege to be the "chaste virgin" espoused to Christ, is the occasion of the symbolic appellation, "harlot," while her influence as a sacerdotal empire, full of inconsistency and confusion, is symbolically represented under the name Babylon, which, in its widest sense, as symbolized by the Babylonian empire, we promptly recognize to be Christendom; while in its more restricted sense, as symbolized by the ancient city Babylon, we recognize to be the nominal Christian Church.

Neither did

The fact that Christendom does not accept the Bible term "Babylon," and its significance, confusion, as applicable to her, is no proof that it is not so. ancient Babylon claim the Bible significance-confusion. Ancient Babylon presumed to be the very "gate of God;" but God labeled it, Confusion (Gen. 11:9): and so it is with her antitype to-day. She calls herself Christendom, the gateway to God and everlasting life, while God calls her Babylon-confusion.

It has been very generally and very properly claimed by Protestants that the name "Babylon" and the prophetic description are applicable to Papacy, though recently a more compromising disposition is less inclined so to apply it. On the contrary, every effort is now made on the part of the sects of Protestantism to conciliate and imitate the Church of Rome, and to affiliate and coöperate with her. In so doing they become part and parcel with her, while they justify her course and fill up the measure of her iniquities, just as surely as did the scribes and Pharisees fill up the measure of their fathers who killed the prophets. (Matt. 23° 31, 32.) All this, of course, neither Protestants nor

Papists are ready to admit, because in so doing they would be condemning themselves. And this fact is recognized by the Revelator, who shows that all who would get a true view of Babylon must, in spirit, take their position with the true people of God "in the wilderness"-in the condition of separation from the world and worldly ideas and mere forms of godliness, and in the condition of entire consecration and faithfulness to and dependence upon God alone. "So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness; and I saw a woman, Babylon. Rev. 17:1-5. And since the kingdoms of the civilized world have submitted to be largely dominated by the influence of the great ecclesiastical systems, especially Papacy, accepting from them the appellation "Christian nations" and "Christendom," and accepting on their authority the doctrine of the divine right of kings, etc., they also link themselves in with great Babylon, and become part of it, so that, as in the type, the name Babylon applied, not only to the city, but also to the whole empire, here also the symbolic term "Babylon" applies, not only to the great religious organizations, Papal and Protestant, but also, in its widest sense, to all Christendom.

Hence this day of judgment upon mystic Babylon is the day of judgment upon all the nations of Christendom; its calamities will involve the entire structure-civil, social and religious; and individuals will be affected by it to the extent of their interest in, and dependence upon, its various organizations and arrangements.

The nations beyond Christendom will also feel the weight of the heavy hand of recompense in that they also are to some extent bound in with the nations of Christendom by various interests, commercial and others; and justly, too, in that they also have failed to appreciate what light they have seen, and have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Thus, as the Prophet declared, “All

the earth [society] shall be devoured with the fire of God's jealousy" (Zeph. 3:8); but against Babylon, Christendom, because of her greater responsibility and misuse of favors received, will burn the fierceness of his wrath and indignation. (Jer. 51:49.) "At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations."-Jer. 50: 46.

BABYLON-MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS.

But some sincere Christians, not yet awake to the decline of Protestantism, and who do not realize the relationship of the various sects to Papacy, but who perceive the unrest and the doctrinal upheavals in all the religious systems, may still be anxiously inquiring,—“If all Christendom is to be involved in the doom of Babylon, what will become of Protestantism, the result of The Great Reformation?" This is an important question; but let the reader consider that Protestantism, as it exists to-day, is not the result of the Great Reformation, but of its decline; and it now partakes to a large degree of the disposition and character of the Church of Rome, from which its various branches sprang. The various Protestant sects (and we say it with all due deference to a comparatively few devout souls within them, whom the Lord designates as "wheat," in contradistinction to the overwhelming numbers of "tares") are the true daughters of that degenerate system of nominal Christianity, the Papacy, to which the Revelator makes reference in applying to her the name "Mother of harlots.” (Rev. 17:5.) And let it not pass unobserved that both Romanists and Protestants now freely own the relationship of mother and daughters, the former continually styling herself the Holy Mother Church, and the latter, with pleased complacency, endorsing the idea, as shown by many pub

lic utterances of leading Protestant clergymen and laymen. Thus they "glory in their shame," apparently all unmindful of the brand which they thus accept from the Word of God, which designates the Papacy as "the mother of harlots." Nor does the Papacy, in claiming her office of motherhood, ever seem to have questioned her right to that title, or to have considered its incompatibility with her profession still to be the only true church, which the Scriptures designate a "virgin" espoused to Christ. Her acknowledged claims of motherhood are to the everlasting shame of both herself and her offspring. The trne Church, which God recognizes, but which the world knows not, is still a virgin; and from her pure and holy estate no daughter systems have ever sprung. She is still a chaste virgin, true to Christ, and dear to him as the apple of his eye. (Zech. 2:8; Psa. 17:6, 8.) The true Church cannot be pointed out anywhere as a company from which all the tares have been separated, but it consists only of the true "wheat," and all such are known unto God, whether the world recognizes them or not.

But let us see how the Protestant systems sustain this relationship of daughters to Papacy. Since Papacy, the mother, is not a single individual, but a great religious system, in keeping with the symbol we should expect to see other religious systems answering to the illustration of daughters of similar character-not, of course, so old, nor necessarily so depraved, as Papacy—but, nevertheless, “harlots" in the same sense; i. e., religious systems claiming to be either the espoused virgin or the bride of Christ, and yet courting the favor and receiving the support of the world, at the price of disloyalty to Christ.

To this description the various Protestant organizations fully correspond. They are the great daughter systems. As already pointed out* the birth of these various daugh* VOL. III., p. 112.