Behold these evidences! How wonderful is prophecy!" Smyrna has been utterly destroyed six times.

If her crown of life had been an insurance policy, she would have had an opportunity to collect on it the first time she fell.

But she holds it on sufferance and by a complimentary construction of language which does not refer to her.

Six different times, however, I suppose some infatuated prophecy-enthusiast blundered along and said, to the infinite disgust of Smyrna and the Smyrniotes: "In sooth, here is astounding fulfillment of prophecy! Smyrna hath not been faithful unto death, and behold her crown of life is vanished from her head.

Verily, these things be astonishing!" Such things have a bad influence.