trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

V. 7.--"The first angel sounded." The object of this judgment is the
_earth_, the population of the empire in general. The judgment itself
is, "hail and fire mingled with blood,"--desolating wars, like
successive storms of hail mingled with lightning, "hailstones and coals
of fire." (Ps. xviii. 12.) The effect is, a consumption of a third part
of the "trees and grass," people in high and low degrees. Green trees
and grass are the ornaments and products, of a land: and when the earth
is an emblem of nations and dominions, trees and grass may represent
persons of higher and lower rank.

The careful student of the Apocalypse will discover a striking analogy
between the effects of the trumpets and vials as the latter are
presented in the sixteenth chapter. This first trumpet therefore
produces an effect upon the social order of Christendom, which will
continue till the pouring out of the first vial. As the Roman empire in
its twofold division is the general object of all the trumpets; so the
first four are directed towards the western, and the next two against
the eastern member.

The infidel historian Gibbon has unwittingly recorded the fulfilment of
these predictions, as Josephus has done those of our Lord respecting the
destruction of Jerusalem. Unconscious that he was bearing testimony to
the truth of prophecy, Gibbon used with his classic pen the very
allegorical language of the inspired apostle. Respecting the incursion
of the barbarous Goths, as led by Alaric their chief into the fertile
plains of southern Europe, he describes their alarming descent as a
_"dark cloud_, which having collected along the coasts of the Baltic,
burst in _thunder_ upon the banks of the upper Danube." He who directed