Revelation 8:10,11

THE THIRD TRUMPET.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell. great star from heaven, burning as it were. lamp, and it fell upon. third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. 8:10, 11.

The third angel sounds the charge of battle. Now the apostle beholds. mighty meteor,. burning star,. shooting star, that falls upon the rivers and fountains of waters. Where it falls they become bitter as wormwood, and are full of death. This evidently presages. time of great calamity and death in some way connected with the rivers of the Roman Empire.. star, as. have before said, would refer to some mighty chieftain. This is. blazing meteor that flashes with brilliancy and then expires. Who can be meant? None other but Attila, who styled himself the scourge of God. The next of the series of the four invasions that precipitated the downfall of Rome was that led by Attila the Hun.

Before A. D. 440, the Roman had never heard of the Hungarian nation. About that time there suddenly appeared, as. meteor would flash in the sky,. warrior upon the banks of the Danube, with eight hundred thousand fighting men under his banners. They had come from the depths of Central Asia, marched north of the Euxine Sea through Russia, and now knocked at the river boundary of the Roman Empire. Overcoming opposition to their passage of the Danube, they rushed westward, crossed the Rhine, and on the river Marne were met in conflict by the hosts of Rome. The historians tell us that the blood of slaughtered heroes made the river run with blood, and that from one hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand bodies of the dead attested the fury of the conflict.

Turning southward, on the banks of the river Rhone, the hosts met again in fury. Then, descending from the Alps, the fierce warrior, on the banks of the river Po, contended for the mastery of Italy. Victorious, he marched southward to seize the imperial prize. Unable to contend longer, Rome sent. priestly deputation to ask him to depart. They told him that Alaric had pillaged Rome, and in three days after was dead, that Genseric had sacked it again, and in. few months had expiated his crime by death. They worked upon the superstitions of the fierce warrior. Loaded with spoil, he turned his armies from. ruined country, and, leaving Italy behind, made Buda on the river Danube his capital, and founded the Hungarian nation. When he died, his followers turned the waters of the Danube from its course, buried him in its bed, and then let them return to flow over the grave of the hero. Beneath the waters of the river Danube still lie the bones of the star called Wormwood, that fell upon the rivers. Rome, weakened, ready to topple to ruin, was left standing to await the blast of the fourth trumpet. The first trumpet sounds the invasion of Alaric the Goth, who sacked Rome in 410. The second trumpet sounds the Vandal conquest of the sea, and the second sack of Rome by the pirate Vandals, who assailed it from their ships. The third trumpet sounds the fierce rush of Attila the Hun, the Wormwood of the rivers, the fierce warrior who first appeared to Roman view on the river Danube, then fought mighty conflicts on the Rhine and Marne, then in the river system of Italy, on the Po, ruined the Roman armies, and, at last, was buried under the turbulent current of the river Danube, where his moldering ashes will rest until the resurrection. How much like. "burning star,". meteor, was Attila, when we remember that in three years from his first appearance on the borders of the Roman Empire he had run his brilliant course and was dead! How much like wormwood of the rivers when we remember that he made them bitterness and mourning and death to the Roman world!

One of the four hurtful angels yet remains. Rome, scarred, bleeding, pillaged, great in her mighty past, trembling with weakness and fear, yet survived. The feet of iron seen by Nebuchadnezzar in the image of the vision interpreted by Daniel, had become weak as miry clay. The empire that had given its official sanction to the crucifixion of Christ, had carried the great apostle to the Gentiles. prisoner in chains to its capital city, had sent him to the dungeon and to the scaffold, and had striven in vain to "abolish the Christian name from the earth," still showed the breath of life in its decaying body, but required only the rush of the fourth wind to fall into helpless ruin.