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THE APOCALYPSE 
 
 ITS STRUCTURE AND PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE 
 
 ITS STRUCTURE AND PRIMARY 
 PREDICTIONS. 
 
 DAVID BROWN, D.D., 
 
 Principal of the Free Church College, Aberdeen. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MPCCCXCl. 
 
Printed !y Ha.cn, uZ^^^Z^^^^^^^^- ' ^""'^^ ""'' ''''"''"''■ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 T T is with more diffidence than I can expect 
 to get credit for that I issue this booklet. 
 I have not written a line on the subject of 
 Prophecy since, nearly fifty years ago, I pub- 
 lished a book on the Second Advent. My 
 studies since then have lain in a more ex- 
 tended direction. But the successive editions 
 of that book, and the increased attention given 
 to Prophecy, in its bearing on the time when 
 the Second Coming of our Lord is to be 
 expected, led to a desire, repeatedly expressed, 
 that I should write something on the Book of 
 Revelation, and, from the other side of the 
 Atlantic, that I should write a commentary on 
 that Book — a thing which I need hardly say 
 I did not listen to for a moment, nor would 
 
vi PRE FA CE. 
 
 I consent to take up my pen on the subject at 
 all. But after repeated solicitations I at length 
 committed myself so far as to write to the 
 able Editor of the Expositor that I might try 
 an A B C of the Apocalypse — perhaps pro- 
 mised to do it. Whereupon it was announced 
 as among the subjects on which papers might 
 be expected in the forthcoming years. Yet 
 only after two years did I send a tentative 
 article on the Date of the Apocalypse, which 
 was followed up by one on the Design of the 
 Apocalypse ; after which I got so into the 
 subject that the issue is the present volume. 
 
 This is the whole history of the book, and 
 I mention it only that the reader may under- 
 stand what could have induced one at my age 
 to close my literary work with this subject. On 
 the main lines of the Book of Revelation my 
 mind had long been made up, and is now 
 as decided as ever. As a contribution, there- 
 fore, to the understanding of the mind of the 
 Spirit in it, I thought it might be a duty not 
 
PREFA CE. vii 
 
 to refuse to give others the benefit of my 
 own studies in it, such as they were, 
 
 I will only add that oversights may pro- 
 bably be found here and there ; but when one 
 is nearly eighty-eight years of age, while his 
 feeble eyesight can receive no aid from arti- 
 ficial light, such things will be pardoned. In 
 fact, should none appear, it is due to the 
 intelligent pains taken upon the proofs in the 
 printing office, which I must here gratefully 
 acknowledge. 
 
 March \tli, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION : 
 
 (i) Authenticity of the Apocalypse 
 
 (2) Date of the Apocalypse 
 
 (3) Design of the Apocalypse 
 Addendum : Sir W. Hamilton's Attack on the Apocalypse 
 
 STRUCTURE OF THE APOCALYPSE , 
 
 VISION OF THE SEVEN SEALS 
 
 PRINCIPLE OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 FIRST SEAL ..... 
 
 FIFTH SEAL .... 
 
 SIXTH SEAL .... 
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON 
 
 THE WAR IN HEAVEN . 
 
 PREPARATIONS FOR THE OPENING OF THi: SEVENTH SEAL 9 1 
 
 THE SEVENTH SEAL AND SEVEN TRUMPETS . . .96 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 26 
 
 35 
 67 
 
 70 
 
 75 
 79 
 79 
 8i 
 
 83 
 86 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE dragon's new POLICY ...... 99 
 
 (1) " Woe for the earth " ...... lOO 
 
 (2) " Woe for the sea " — Rise of the "beast" . . 102 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS BESTIAL POWER . . . IO4 
 MEASURING THE TEMPLE, THE ALTAR, AND THE WOR- 
 SHIPPERS . • , . . . . .112 
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES . . . . . ,. "US 
 
 THEIR MARTYRDOM, RESURRECTION, AND ASCENSION . I18 
 
 THE SEVEN VIALS, WITH THE CHORAL HYMNS . . I26 
 
 THE KEY TO THE MYSTERY ...... I36 
 
 SUMMARY ......... 145 
 
 CONFIRMATORY PREDICTIONS : 
 
 2 Thess. ii. 1-12; l Tim. iv. 1-5 ..... 149 
 
 THE FALL OF BABYLON AND SUMMONS TO COME OUT OF 
 
 IT ERE IT FALL ....... 161 
 
 DIRGE OVER THE FALL OF BABYLON . . . . 165 
 
 HALLELUJAHS OVER ITS FALL . . . . . 166 
 
 THE LAST WAR, AND END OF CHRISt's PUBLIC ENEMIES. I70 
 THE THOUSAND YEARS . . . . . . . I76 
 
 THE THOUSAND YEARS* REIGN WITH CHRIST . . . 180 
 
 THE REST OF THE DEAD ...... I91 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Satan's last effort and final defeat . , . 195 
 
 the general judgment . . . . . ,198 
 
 the last things ..... , 200 
 
 concluding remarks ..... . 202 
 
 ADDENDA . . . . . . .211 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
AUTHENTICITY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 For detailed evidence of this I must refer to the Intro- 
 ductions to the New Testament, and especially to this book, 
 which of late years have been abundant. But a few notes 
 of my own may not be out of place here. 
 
 I. It is a remarkable fact that, of the six books of 
 the New Testament whose authenticity was doubted in the 
 early Church, the doubts about five of them — the Epistle 
 of James, the Second of Peter, the Second and Third of 
 John, and that of Jude — existed from the first, and only 
 gave way in the fourth century ; whereas the authenticity 
 of the Apocalypse only began to be doubted in the third 
 century, when Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, went down 
 to Egypt to refute the Chiliasts — the millennarian followers 
 of Nepos, the warm-hearted bishop of Arsinoe. And it 
 was only when hard pressed by their Apocalyptic argu- 
 ments, that he had to confess that he had great doubts 
 about the authenticity of that book. Not that he could 
 name any one who had done so before him, — but because 
 of its obscurity ; the grossness of its millennarianism ; the 
 barbarisms or solecisms of its Greek (so differentl in every 
 respect from the apostle John's) ; the writer's naming him- 
 self " John," whereas the apostle seems studiously to avoid 
 naming himself; and the uncertainty as to what John it 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 was who wrote it — whether it may not have been some 
 Presbyter of that name.* 
 
 It says not a Httle, I think, for the critical acuteness of 
 this bishop, that he has anticipated all that up to this time 
 has ever been urged against the authenticity of this book. 
 The objections themselves are all internal, with one excep- 
 tion ; and they will be sufficiently met under the next head 
 — the Date of the Apocalypse. The one objection not 
 there touched on is, that the writer frequently names him- 
 self " John," which the apostle John in his acknowledged 
 writings never does. But the answer to that is easy. 
 Those who read the Fourth Gospel and the three Epistles 
 have no need to be told that the writer expects to be recog- 
 nised as the beloved disciple ; whereas the Apocalypse 
 is throughout a record of what no one was, or could be, 
 an eye and ear witness to but the writer himself. He was 
 therefore bound to tell his readers who he was, and how 
 and in what circumstances these strange revelations were 
 made to him — and this is just what he tells us. 
 
 As for Dionysius, he was one of the " AUegorists," who 
 were driven to interpret the book in a spiritual sense to 
 meet the Literalists. His master was Origen, the greatest 
 Biblical scholar which the Church produced. In his travels 
 he made it his business to collect all the information he 
 could on Biblical subjects — as witness his great Hexapla 
 of the Old Testament. His testimony, therefore, on the 
 authenticity of the Apocalypse is of peculiar value. His 
 works (3 vols., folio), I have carefully examined, and 
 have found as many as fifty, either quotations from or 
 references to the Apocalypse as a genuine work of the 
 apostle John, without a hint of any doubt on the subject 
 having existed. 
 
 * Euseb., H. E., vii. 24, 25. 
 
AUTHENTICITY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 5 
 
 2. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis (in the vicinity of the 
 seven churches), was within the circle of the apostle John's 
 immediate disciples ; and no one who reads what Eusebius 
 tells us of his stories about what would be seen during 
 the thousand years, can doubt that they were all spun out 
 of what he supposed the Apocalypse to predict about that 
 period. 
 
 Ty. Justin Martyr (a.d. 140 — 160) explicitly ascribes the 
 Apocalypse to the apostle John ; and in his dialogue with 
 Trypho the Jew he expresses his own expectations of what 
 the earth would be during the thousand years. 
 
 4. Meltto, bishop of Sardis (one of the seven churches) 
 and a contemporary of Justin Martyr, wrote several works, 
 which Eusebius enumerates, one of which (or two) is on 
 the devil and the Revelation of John. 
 
 5. The priceless Letter of the Churches of Lyons and 
 Vienne to the brethren of the Asiatic Churches, giving 
 them, at their request, a thrilling account of the sufferings 
 of the Christians of Gaul, and their heroic endurance of 
 martyrdom, in the persecution set on foot by Marcus 
 Antoninus (a.d. 177). That letter — preserved almost entire 
 by Eusebius (H. E., v. i, 2) — tells us how the martyrs 
 " followed the Lamb whithersoever He would go " ; and 
 when we find it quoting the words, " He that is unjust let 
 him be unjust still, and he that is holy let him be holy 
 still," we can be at no loss to know what book had endeared 
 itself to those suffering Christians. 
 
 But if the authenticity of the Apocalypse was recognised 
 so early, how was it not in either the Old Syriac or the 
 Old Latin versions — now known to have been made not 
 later than the middle of the second century ? That 
 question is easily answered. The books most read in the 
 public services, and most prized, would of course be the 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 first to be translated — the four Gospels ; and then gradually 
 all the rest. But, as we may be quite sure that the 
 Apocalypse would, no more than now, be read in public 
 (and for the same obvious reason), we may be sure that 
 it would remain untranslated for some time. For the same 
 reason, fewer copies of the original would be made than 
 of all the other books, and for this reason too, of all the 
 books of the New Testament now extant, copies of the 
 Apocalypse are far the fewest. 
 
 But unread in the public services though it naturally was, 
 it was far from being little studied and valued in private. 
 The bitter rsecutions of the Christians by successive 
 emperors no doubt raised the cry to heaven, Qiwiisque 
 Do7nine 1 ("iBut Thou, O Lord, how long ?"), and made 
 this book of the New Testament so tenderly encouraging to 
 the faith and patience of the saints, its beautiful promises 
 " to him that overcometh," its glowing assurances of final 
 triumph, and its bright pictures of the reign of Christ on 
 the earth. And what though an excessive literalism in 
 picturing the millennial future took hold, as it certainly 
 did, of its ardent students, who can wonder ? And as 
 little need we wonder at their opponents being driven into 
 the opposite extreme. 
 
II. 
 
 DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE.* 
 
 Among competent judges the difference on this subject 
 lies between two periods : the reign of Nero, and shortly 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem, about a.d. 68 ; or the 
 reign of Domitian, and shortly before his death, about 
 A.D. 95 or 96. 
 
 Of external evidence for the former date there is abso- 
 lutely none. In fact, this date was never heard of till the 
 sixth century, and even then only in the superscription to 
 a Syriac version of the book supposed to be of that date. 
 After that we hear nothing of it till, in the twelfth century, 
 we find Theophylact assigning it to the reign of Nero. 
 
 But what says ecclesiastical history to the later date ? 
 The great witness, as he is the primary one, is Irenceus, 
 bishop of Lyons a.d. 177 to circa 202. To Gaul he came 
 from Asia Minor, where he tells us he was a hearer of 
 Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and disciple of the apostle 
 John. In his great work Against Heresies, we find him 
 discussing the two readings of " the number of the beast " 
 (Rev. xiii. 18), whether in the original text it was 666 or 
 616. He says that in all the approved and ancient copies 
 (ev TrScrt rats (TTrouSatats koI dp^^atats dvrtypa^ats) the reading 
 was 666, and that this reading was attested by those who 
 
 From the E.xyositor (1889), vol. x. (3rd series), pp. 272-88. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 had seen John face to face (kui [jiapTvpovvTUiv avrujv Ikc'lvihv 
 Twv Kttx' o^iv Tov 'Icoavvr^v Iwpa/caTcov). The importance 
 attached to this reading lay in the behef that this number 
 enigmatically pointed to the expected antichrist, whose 
 name (he says) he will not speak of confidently, " because 
 had it been necessary to name him at the present time, it 
 would have been declared by him who saw the Revelation ; 
 jior 7vas it long smce it had been seeti, but almost in our 07vn 
 generation (ovSe yap ttoAAov ^j^povou icjpdOr) aAAa o^iSou ettI 
 TTJs i^jaeVepas yeveas), about the end of Domitian's reign." 
 
 This very important statement is twice quoted verbatim 
 by Eusebius (H. E., iii. i8 and v. 8), and the value of it is 
 so felt by the advocates of the early date, that they make 
 every effort to break it down ; while all subsequent testi- 
 mony is regarded as but an echo of this one, and therefore 
 of no value. We must weigh it, then, and all the more 
 because the date of the book has an important bearing on 
 the interpretation of it. 
 
 Observe, then, that Irenaeus " saw and heard " Polycarp 
 in his youth, or early manhood (ev t^ Trpwrr; i7/aojv -rjXiKca, 
 iii. 4) ; and he so describes him as to show what a deep 
 impression that venerable Father had made upon him — an 
 impression of his person as well as his teaching — as may 
 be gathered from a remarkable passage in his " Letter to 
 Florinus." He is there reasoning against certain heresies, 
 and he appeals to the testimony of Polycarp, whose dis- 
 ciples Florinus and he had been. " For I saw thee while 
 I was yet a youth (irats Sdv Iri) in Asia Minor with Polycarp. 
 For impressions made in youth are better remembered than 
 those made quite recently. For what we have been in our 
 youth grows with our spirit, and gets incorporated with it, 
 insomuch that I could even tell the place where the blessed 
 Polycarp sat when discoursing, his exits and entrances, his 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 manner of life and the appearance of his person, his 
 addresses to the people, and his familiarity with John and 
 others who had seen the Lord, which he related to us, and 
 their sayings which he reported." * 
 
 May I not appeal to those who will candidly weigh these 
 statements, whether they do not show that Ireneeus was 
 speaking from knowledge of the fact, when he says that 
 the Revelation was seen not long since, but almost in his 
 own generation, near the close of Domitian's reign ? 
 
 Coming next to the internal evidence for the Neronic 
 date — for it has nothing else to rest on — let us see what 
 the book itself has to say to the question. 
 
 1. In the first, the introductory chapter, the seer tells us 
 how, when in the rocky isle of Patmos, in the ^gean Sea, 
 banished there "for the word of God and for the testimony 
 of Jesus Christ," he was " in the spirit on the Lord's day." 
 Observe the testimony to the late date of this book which 
 crops out, quite incidentally, at the very outset. Up to 
 the date of the last of the Pauline Epistles, the only name 
 for this day current among the Christians was " the first 
 day of the week." Now, since (according to Jerome) the 
 apostle Paul was beheaded in the fourteenth year of Nero's 
 reign (a.d. 68), it must have been after that, and probably 
 some years after, ere this most appropriate abbreviation 
 came into such established use as is implied here. And if 
 this is true, it disposes at once of the Neronic date. 
 
 2. The glaring difference between the Greek of the 
 Apocalypse and that of the Fourth Gospel has led one 
 class of critics to believe that both works cannot have come 
 from the same author ; while others (believing critics), 
 
 * Irenoei 0pp., ed. Stieren, 1883 (pp. 822, 823). 
 
lo INTRODUCTION. 
 
 holding that both came from the pen of the apostle John, 
 explain the peculiar style of Greek in which the Apocalypse 
 is written by its early (Neronic) date, when the apostle was 
 less familiar with the use of the language than when he 
 wrote his Gospel. This was Dr. Westcott's view. But is 
 this the only way for accounting for the sokcisjus of the 
 Apocalypse ? Startling they certainly are, both in their 
 number and in their harshness ; but that they are no 
 proof of the writer's inability to write good Greek is freely 
 admitted, and indeed is evident from his accuracy in other 
 places. The only question, then, is. Must we explain it 
 by his immaturity in the use of the Greek language ? If so, 
 you will have to explain how this immaturity does not show 
 itself from beginning to end. And, what is harder still, 
 you will have to show how so raw a hand, as you suppose 
 the writer to be, was able to coin such compound words as 
 iroTajxo^6pqTo<i (xii. 15), " river-borne " ("carried away by 
 the stream," R.V.); and ^x.f.(Tovpavr)fx.a (ym. 13, xiv. 6, xix. 17), 
 " mid-heaven," found only in one medical writer of about 
 the third century; and x'^XKoXifSavov (i. 15, ii. 18) "bur- 
 nished brass " (R.V.). This kind of coinage seems to me 
 to put an end to the theory of unfamiliarity with the use 
 of the language, and, so far as that is concerned, to the 
 necessity of an early date to the Apocalypse. 
 
 How else the solecisms are to be accounted for, I pre- 
 tend not to explain. But I may be pardoned for throwing 
 out this conjecture. Suppose the seer, being " in the 
 Spirit," and writing under this inspiration, should find that 
 in the rapid flow of his words these abnormal forms had 
 dropped unsought from his pen, half dithrambically, but on 
 observing this, had thought it right to leave them uncor- 
 rected, is there anything incredible or improbable in this ? 
 Be this, however, as it may, if it is not to be traced to 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 ignorance of the language, it has no bearing on the date 
 of the book. 
 
 But, it may be said, it is not on the solecisms of the 
 book only that we rest ; the whole style of Greek used here 
 differs from that of the Fourth Gospel. True enough ; but 
 why ? Not because of any difference of date, but because 
 the subject-matter required a totally different style of writing. 
 Every one knows the difference between prose and poetry. 
 Poets studiously avoid ordinary, familiar forms of expres- 
 sion, and in the choice of words and phrases they go out 
 of their way to find whatever is rare, startling, figurative. 
 Now, the prophetic style, while it has all these characteristics 
 of real poetry, has a boldness and intensity peculiar to 
 itself. Dealing, as it does with the unseen, the celestial 
 and infernal, the transporting and the terrifying, with what 
 stirs the soul as earthly things cannot, it rises to heights 
 and sinks to depths of its own. And if this is to be seen 
 in all Hebrew prophecy, in the Apocalypse it stands out 
 unrivalled. 
 
 As to the avoidance of familiar words and phrases, let 
 any one, with his Greek Testament in hand, observe the 
 number of uncommon words and phrases, evidently selected 
 as such, in the Apocalypse, and he will be convinced, I 
 think, that not any difference of date will explain this, 
 but that it is due rather to the prophetic character of the 
 subject-matter. One illustration of this, which strikes me 
 while I write, I may here give. The unusual word po/x^ata 
 for a " sword " is used in the Apocalypse sixteen times, but 
 nowhere else in the New Testament, save once, and that 
 in a prophetic utterance (Luke ii. 35). 
 
 As specimens of the prophetic style in the Old Testa- 
 ment prophets, let any one compare Isaiah xiii., xiv., with 
 the prose of the same Isaiah ; or the SetvoVi^s of Ezekiel 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xxvii., xxviii., with the prose of the same Ezekiel in such 
 places as xxiii. 21, 22 ; or our Lord's own style in His 
 terrific denunciations of the " scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites," in Matthew xxiii. 13 to end, and the style of His 
 prophecy of Jerusalem in Matthew xxiv. or Luke xxi., when 
 compared with the inimitable prose of His parting address 
 to the Eleven at the supper table, and the high-priestly 
 prayer with which it closes — 
 
 " Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing, and giving odour," — 
 
 and he will not doubt, I think, that it was the subject- 
 matter that gave birth to the style of the Apocalypse. In 
 fact, every good writer's style varies with what he writes 
 about. And if proof were wanting that the apocalyptic 
 seer was no stranger to this ability, we need only refer 
 to the pure prose of the Epistles of the seven Churches 
 (chap, ii., iii.), in the very midst of which two of the 
 solecisms occur. 
 
 3. If the following features of the Apocalypse have any 
 truth in them, the advocates of the late date of that book 
 entirely misunderstand it. And as the quarter from which 
 the statement of them comes is entitled to great deference, 
 I must examine it in detail. It is thus expressed by 
 Dr. Westcott, in the Introduction to his great work on the 
 Gospel of St. John : — 
 
 " The Apocalypse is doctriiially the uniting link between the 
 Synoptists and the Fourth Gospel. It offers the characteristic 
 thoughts of the Fourth Gospel in that form of development 
 which belongs to the earliest apostolic age. It belongs to dif- 
 ferent historical circumstances, to a different phase of intellectual 
 progress, to a different theological stage, from that of St. John's 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 13 
 
 Gospel ; and yet it is not only harmonious with it in teaching, 
 but in the order of thought it is the necessary germ out of which 
 the Gospel proceeded by a process of life." * 
 
 With submission, I venture to say, that there is no such 
 relation between the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel as 
 is here described. Harmonious indeed they are in their 
 teaching, but the one is in no sense the germ of the other. 
 The truths common to both are presented historically in 
 the one book, in the other scenically. In the Gospel they 
 appear in their abstract, settled, enduring form, unaffected 
 alike by time and by circumstances ; in the Apocalypse 
 they appear in the concrete form, taking their shape from 
 definite circumstances and specific occasions. In the one 
 case, the interest they possess lies wholly in what is of 
 eternal moment ; in the other case, it lies in the changing 
 forms which the great struggle between the organised king- 
 doms of light and of darkness assume in successive ages. 
 With what propriety, then, can it be said that the one is the 
 necessary germ out of which the other proceeds ? that the 
 one represents an earlier stage in the development of the 
 same characteristics as the other? In this respect I venture 
 to think that they admit of no comparison. 
 
 There is, however, a true, a most important sense 
 which the truths common to both books appear in a less 
 developed form in the one book than in the other. But it 
 is not in the Apocalypse, but in the Fourth Gospel, that 
 that less developed form appears. In that latest Gospel 
 the developed results of God's redeeming love and of 
 Christ's finished work could not possibly appear. But in 
 the Apocalypse they stand out in a form so naked, so rich, 
 so thrilling, as to endear that book to thousands who never 
 
 * Gospel of St. John, " Ititrod.," p. Ixxxiv. (Murray, 1882.) 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 attempt to sound the depths of its prophetic mysteries. 
 ^^ I have many things to say unto you,^' were among the last 
 words which the Master addressed to the Eleven before He 
 suffered, " but ye cannot bear them fiow. Howbeit when He, 
 the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the 
 truth: for He shall not speak from Himself; but what 
 things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak : and He 
 shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall 
 glorify Me : for He shall receive of Mine, and shall declare 
 it unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are 
 Mine : therefore said I, that He taketh of Mine, and shall 
 declare it unto you." The best commentary on these 
 words is, first of all, the Acts of the Apostles, from begin- 
 ning to end ; and yet, even there, we find ourselves only in 
 the vestibule of the temple of " the Spirit of truth." Only 
 after the disciples had been formed into churches, needing 
 further instruction by the precious Epistles written to them, 
 do we see how the Spirit had " guided them into all the 
 truth," making them "able to comprehend what is the 
 breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know 
 the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and be filled 
 with all the fulness of God." So long as the Master was 
 with them, the very language in which such things are 
 expressed in the Epistles would have been unintelligible. 
 But once ascended on high, and the Holy Ghost resting on 
 the Church, the apostles could say to the churches they 
 had gathered, and the churches could understand them 
 when they said, " In whom we have redemption through 
 His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches 
 of His grace " ; and so, in every varied form, in all the 
 Epistles. But the Apocalypse lifts us to even a higher 
 region, giving forth the same truths in strains so exalted as 
 almost to dim the brightness of them everywhere else. There 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 15 
 
 the veil seems to be lifted, and we are ushered into the 
 midst of things invisible and inaudible, with eyes to see and 
 ears to hear. What is elsewhere simply announced is here 
 e?tacted; what elsewhere is said is here sung, sweeping upon 
 the ear in strains celestial. "We love Him (says the 
 beloved disciple), because He first loved us," — words which 
 will never die upon the lips of any that has ever felt it. 
 But here he rises even above himself, bursting out into 
 song : — " Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our 
 sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests 
 unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion 
 for ever and ever. Amen." In the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 we read, " To them that look for Him shall He appear the 
 second time without sin unto salvation." Delightful prose, 
 indeed ; but, as if that were too tame, here we seem to see 
 Himself darting through these heavens, to the view of every 
 eye : " Behold, He eometh with clouds ; and every eye 
 shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him ; and all 
 kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." 
 
 But do I see evidence in this of a later date for the 
 Apocalypse ? So far from that, I believe that his Gospel, 
 his Epistles, and the Apocalypse were all written by the 
 last of the apostles in his old age. But, instead of its 
 being " doctrinally the uniting link between the Synoptists 
 and the Fourth Gospel," " the necessary germ out of which 
 by a process of life the Fourth Gospel proceeded " (a view 
 of the subject very wide of the mark, as I humbly think), it 
 is in my view simply the same truths, which in their ripest 
 stage and fullest development appear in the Epistles, lifted 
 up {in the entrancing effect which they produce upon the 
 heart) to the third heaven. 
 
 How true this is, grows upon one the farther he advances 
 in the study of the book. When we come to the strictly 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 prophetic part of it, we have at the outset a grand intro- 
 ductory vision in two parts : in the first part (chap, iv.) of 
 God as Creator; in the second (chap, v.) of Christ as 
 Redeemer ; in both cases, however, it is in a language of 
 its own, the significance of which is such that it seems, 
 by its symbols and scenic actions, to compress within a 
 nutshell all that is grandest and richest in every other part 
 of Scripture. In the first part we have " Him that sitteth 
 upon the throne," in whose ears day and night is heard 
 the cry, from one class, of " Holy, holy, holy. Lord God 
 Almighty, which was, and which is, and which is to come," 
 and from another, " Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our 
 God, to receive the glory and the honour and the power : 
 for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy good 
 will they were, and were created." This is the hymn of 
 creation. Now for redemption. In the right hand of Him 
 that sat on the throne is seen a book (the book of the 
 Church's fortunes). A challenge is addressed in a loud 
 voice to all creation, for one worthy to open it and reveal 
 its contents, if such could be found. But none answering, 
 the seer weeps much, as if the case were desperate. But 
 he is soon relieved with an assurance which can only be 
 expressed in the angelic language, " Behold, the Lion of 
 the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath conquered" 
 (eViKr/o-ev) the right " to open and loose " the seals of this 
 mysterious book. Whereupon, "in the midst of the throne, 
 and in the midst of the living creatures, and in the midst 
 of the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been 
 slain (in the eternal freshness, the all-atoning virtue, of 
 His precious blood), having seven horns and seven eyes, 
 which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the 
 earth " (the omnipotence and omniscience of the Spirit in 
 the hands of the enthroned Lamb over the whole earth, to 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. i-j 
 
 conquer for Himself His inheritance, the uttermost parts 
 of the earth for His possession). This done, the whole 
 ransomed Church (in its twofold character of priests and 
 kings, " the living creatures and the elders "), with their 
 harps and the sweet incense of their deepest emotions, sang 
 that " new song " which will never grow old, " Thou art 
 worthy to take the book and loose its seals : for Thou wast 
 slain, and didst purchase us with Thy blood out of every 
 tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation; and madest 
 them to be unto our God kings and priests : and they do 
 reign (or shall reign) upon the earth," — that earth which the 
 fall sold into the hands of the usurper, now cast out. The 
 angels then join in the chorus, but one note is now left out. 
 " Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain " (not now " for 
 us ") ; and this is at length taken up by the whole creation, 
 in a fourfold ascription of " blessing, and honour, and glory, 
 and power to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the 
 Lamb, for ever and ever " — thus clasping both parts of this 
 incomparable vision in one, while the Church says the 
 ** Amen "to " Him that liveth for ever and ever." 
 
 But what bearing, it may be asked, has this upon the 
 question of date ? To me it suggests this question : Is it 
 natural to suppose that a book presenting the most exalted 
 conceptions of the glory and majesty of the Eternal, with 
 the ripest and richest expressions of the Person and work of 
 Christ, and both these breaking upon our ear in strains of 
 celestial music, was written so much earlier than the Fourth 
 Gospel that " it belongs to the earliest apostolic age " ? 
 For myself, I cannot believe it. 
 
 But this becomes more difficult to believe as we advance 
 in the visions of the book. We have seen how the two 
 central objects, " God and the Lamb," stand out together 
 
 2 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in the great introductory vision. In chap. vii. the seer 
 beholds " standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, 
 a great multitude which no man could number, out of every 
 nation, and of all tribes, and peoples, and tongues, arrayed 
 in white robes, and palms in their hands, and crying with a 
 loud voice, Salvation unto our God, which sitteth on the 
 throne (the Source of it), and unto the Lamb (the media- 
 torial Channel of it) " ; while round al)out them stood all 
 the angels, who fall on their faces, and worship Him that 
 liveth for ever and ever. But what is the secret of those 
 " white robei " and their right to " stand " before the 
 throne, since from the very face of Him that sitteth upon 
 it " the earth and the heaven fled away " at the last judg- 
 ment, " and there was found no place for them " ? They 
 had come out of the great tribulation, and had '■'■washed 
 their robes, and made them white, in the blood of the Lamb. 
 Therefore are they before the throne of God," etc. Does 
 such language read as if it " belonged to the earliest apostolic 
 age " ? That is not my reading of the New Testament. 
 
 A word on :he surpassing strains of the two last chapters. 
 When one reads in the Pilgrim's Progress, how, when 
 winding up his immortal allegory, the author's language 
 sounds like the music of heaven, he is ready to say. Was 
 ever such a finish given to any story ? But whence did he 
 draw his inspiration ? From this book ; but for w-hose 
 closing chapters — fit close to the inspired volume itself — 
 we are safe to say such language could never have been 
 penned. Yet this, we are to believe, " belongs to the 
 earliest apostolic age " ! 
 
 These, however, are but great generalities. To me there 
 are certain specific characteristics of this book which speak 
 for anything but an early date. 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 19 
 
 I. The Church of God under the old dispensation was 
 one undivided whole, existing only in " the Lord's land," 
 and its central seat was on Mount Zion, in the Tabernacle 
 and Temple. Accordingly the golden candlestick, or lamp- 
 stand, was one, and the seven branches of it, when all 
 lighted up, gave light to the whole interior. But in the 
 Apocalypse, at the very outset, the seer beheld, not one, 
 but " seven golden candlesticks " or lamp-stands ; and as 
 these represented the seven distinct churches, there is here 
 announced a complete ecclesiastical revolution — the Church 
 of God, in its external framework, no longer one, but 
 broken up into sections corresponding with the geographical 
 divisions of its members. Our Lord gives a very distinct 
 intimation that such a division of " His sheep " was at 
 hand. Speaking of His true disciples, who at that time 
 were all Jews, He says : " I lay down My life for the sheep. 
 And other sheep I have, ivhich are not of this fold : them also 
 I must bring, and they shall hear My voice : and they shall 
 become one flock and one Shepherd'"'' (John x. 16). The A.V., 
 by translating " one fold" expresses the precise theory of 
 the Church of Rome, that the whole Church of Christ 
 should be within one pale. But since the seven churches 
 of Asia were in all outward respects as distinct from one 
 another in their corporate existence and internal condition 
 as were the localities in which they were placed, so we 
 must hold the teaching of the Apocalypse to be, that the 
 Church of Christ is intended to consist of as many distinct 
 and independent branches as the different localities (or 
 perhaps impossible combinations) in which they find them- 
 selves. 
 
 That such a conception could not have found a place 
 in a book written " in the earliest apostolic age," and 
 in so distracted a time as on the eve of the destruction 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of Jerusalem, I do not say. But in my judgment it 
 clearly belongs more naturally to a later stage and a more 
 settled state of things in the development of the Church 
 of Christ. But this brings me to the Epistles to the seven 
 churches. 
 
 2. I am not disposed to make too much of the degene- 
 rate character of some of these seven churches, especially 
 of the last one, Laodicsea, as an evidence of the late date at 
 which they must have been written. But taken along with 
 other arguments in the same direction, this degeneracy is 
 certainly noteworthy. Take the first of these Epistles — to 
 Epjiesus. Three years or more after this church sprang 
 up, in a city steeped in a gorgeous and witching idolatry, 
 its spiritual father addressed them through its assembled 
 elders at Miletus (Acts xx.) ; but though he had to warn 
 them against an influx of self-seeking teachers, and false 
 brethren among themselves, the Epistle which he wrote to 
 tnem about four years after that, so far from showing that 
 they had sensibly declined, teems with evidence implying 
 rather a steady condition. But when the Master addresses 
 this church in the Apocalypse — within four or five years 
 only after that, if the Neronic date is adopted — it had 
 so sunk that, should it not repent, the removal of its 
 candlestick, or its extinction as a church, would follow. 
 The church of Sardis " had a name to live " — a reputation 
 among the churches for being full of spiritual life — " but 
 was dead " : the life they had having died down, and they 
 were living upon their reputation. The white raiment 
 given them at their conversion (compare Zech. iii. 4) had 
 been so ill kept that but " a few names " could be found 
 who " had not defiled" them. As for the Laodica;a?is' 
 condition, it was so loathsome in the pure eye of its 
 exalted T-ord, that He likens it to food which one is fain 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 21 
 
 to vomit up. Does this look like churches only a few years 
 in existence ? 
 
 3. The Lamb, as a proper name, is never applied to 
 Christ by any New Testament writer save John, and even 
 by him nowhere in his Gospel nor in his Epistles. For 
 though it occurs twice in his Gospel, he is there reporting 
 an exclamation of the Baptist (John i. 29, 36). But when 
 we come to the Apocalypse, we find it no fewer than twenty- 
 eight times. In fact, the constant recurrence of this re- 
 markable epithet is a special characteristic of the book ; 
 and if the reader will attentively examine this phrase 
 as it occurs in chap. v. he will come, I think, to this 
 conclusion : that while it presents the great central truth 
 of the atonement in no more fully developed form than 
 in the Pauline and Petrine Epistles, it is a form which, 
 if it had struck upon the ear of the Church in the time 
 of these apostles, would have become the currejit coin 
 of its phraseology — one of those household words which 
 could not fail to crop out here and there, if only for variety, 
 in their writings. But since we find it nowhere but in this 
 book, it is to me no sHght evidence that it was not in 
 existence in their day. 
 
 4. " The books of life " is a phrase used only once 
 elsewhere in the New Testament (Phil, iv.), as a record of 
 names, the names of the righteous, which God is supposed 
 to keep ; we find it as early as the days of Moses (Exod. 
 xxxii. 32). The psalmist catches it up (Ps. Ixix. 285 cxxxix. 
 16). In Malachi (iii. 16) it is said, of a time of deep 
 religious declension, that " a book of remembrance was 
 written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that 
 thought upon His name." But in Daniel, the apocalyptic 
 book of the Old Testament, besides occurring in the definite 
 form, "the book" (xii. i), we have the phrase in a quite 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 distinct form — that of " books" in the plural number. The 
 scene in which it occurs is a scene of "the last judgment"; 
 but it is not of individual vie^i^ but of nations in their 
 corporate capacity, and therefore here on earth. It is the 
 judgment of the four kingdoms previously specified, the 
 oppressors of the Church, together with one terrible form 
 of the fourth one. " Thrones " of judgment being " placed," 
 One that was the " Ancient of days did sit " for judgment 
 in terrible majesty, surrounded by myriads of angels ; the 
 judgment was set, " and the books were opened." This 
 was no record of names, but of the deeds of those kingdoms 
 for which they were to be condemned, and their kingdoms 
 were to give place to that of the "Son of man," whose 
 kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Now, observe how 
 this double conception of " the book " (of names) and " the 
 books " (of deeds) is taken up in our New Testament 
 Apocalypse. Four times it comes before us ; but I begin 
 with the place where they both appear in a very definite 
 and most wary form (chap. xx. ii, 12, 15). "And I saw a 
 great white throne, and Him that sat upon it, from whose 
 face the earth and heaven fled away, and there was found 
 no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the 
 small, standing before the throne ; and books were opened, 
 and another book was opened, which is the book of life : and 
 the dead were judged out of those things which were 
 written in the books, according to their works. . . . And if any 
 one was not written in the book, he was cast into the lake 
 of fire." The sublime idea conveyed by this artistic dis- 
 tinction between " the book " and " the books " is that the 
 judgment proceeded exclusively upon " their works," as 
 recorded in " the books " ; but that, this done, " that other 
 book was opened," from which it appeared that this deci- 
 sion, both upon the righteous and the wicked, had been 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 23 
 
 recorded in that book " from the foundation of the world " 
 — the names of those adjudged by " the booKS " to " eternal 
 life " being exclusively found there, while the absence of the 
 names of all others (" if any one was not found written " 
 there) expressed negatively what would be found to be 
 their due. Thus two characteristics of this book come 
 out : its being the book of those " ordained to eternal life " 
 (Acts xiii. 48), and its having been written " before the 
 foundation of the world." Another characteristic of vital 
 moment is, that it is "the book of life of the Lamb that 
 was slain " — that is, specifically in His sacrificial character ; 
 teaching this great truth, that the names found in this book 
 were written there solel y in virtue of their c onnpx^pm with 
 His atoning death, eventually to take place. And so it is 
 called " the Lamb's book of life." * 
 
 What conclusion now, as to the date of the Apocalypse, 
 do I draw from these facts ? Decidedly this : that the 
 whole conception of " the book of life," and " the books " 
 out of which the dead will be judged, has advanced pro- 
 gressively in the outcome of Divine revelation, and that, 
 appearing only in its fullest, most artistic, and most speak- 
 ing form, it proclaims its place in the order of time to 
 
 * It is ajhousand pities, I think, that both the Authorised and 
 Revised Versions punctuate chap. xiii. 8 thus : " The book of life of 
 the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." No such idea as 
 this, that Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world, is 
 anywhere else to be found in the New Testament; and if anyone 
 will compare the same idea of chap. xiii. 8 as it is repeated in xvii. 8, 
 where only the writing of their names from the foundation of the 
 world (not His being slain from that time) is mentioned, he will see, 
 I think, that the following is the proper punctuation of the verse : 
 " All whose names are not written from the foundation of the world 
 in the book of life of the Lamb that hath been slain " (as in the 
 margin of the R.V.). 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be in this book, as the fitting close of all revealed truth. 
 But— 
 
 5. What shall I say of the almost countless number of 
 phrases peculiar to this book, but full of pregnancy ? Take 
 the seven epistles — " the first love " of one church " left," 
 and " the last works " of another church " more than the 
 first " ; the burning eyes of their exalted Head having " a 
 few things " against two of the churches otherwise praised ; 
 one church commended for having " a little strength," and 
 not " denying His name," " the second death," and so on. 
 Then, in the prophetic part, the central position given 
 to the symbols of the living creatures and the elders 
 (because representing the redeemed, as is evident from 
 chap. V. 9), while outside of them and surrounding them 
 are the angels, who also ascribe worthiness to the Lamb 
 that was slain, but do not say " for us," as in verse 9). And 
 above all, the constant conjunction of " Him that sitteth 
 upon the throne and the Lamb," the one as the fountain 
 whence flows all salvation, the other as the channel 
 through which it all flows to men. In chap. v. the relative 
 position of each respectively, and their absolute oneness 
 in the work of redemption (as in John xiv. 7, 9 — 11, 23; 
 xvi. 15 ; xvii. 21), stand boldly out; but in chap. vi. 16 we 
 have them awfully associated in " the wrath of Him that 
 sitteth upon the throne, and the wrath of the Lamb." In 
 a word, that peculiar name given to the enemy of souls, 
 suggested by his occupation, " the accuser of the brethren," 
 who "accuseth them before our God day and night." In 
 fact, the whole book teems with unique epithets and 
 phrases, and symbolic arrangements, suggestive of the " un- 
 searchable riches" of thnt scheme of salvation which, while 
 expressed it is true in fully developed forms in the apostolic 
 Epistles, appears in this book as if the seer had been 
 
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 25 
 
 instructed to take us, not into the sanctuary only, but into 
 the holy of holies. 
 
 In view of all this, can it be said that this book reads 
 like " the connecting link between the Synoptists and the 
 Fourth Gospel," and "that form of development which 
 belongs to the earliest apostolic age " ? Let the reader 
 judge. 
 
III. 
 
 DESIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE.* 
 
 There are but two possible theories of what the Apocalypse 
 was written for. It is either essentially predictive or purely 
 descriptive. Its proper subject-matter is either events or 
 ideas. In the one case, its purpose is to foreshadow the 
 future fortunes of the Church, at successive epochs of its 
 history ; in the other case, to set forth, in symbolic scenes 
 and dramatic movements, the great principles that have 
 been struggling for the mastery in all ages and in different 
 forms — light and darkness, good and evil, the so-called 
 World-Power, whether Egypt or Babylon, Pagan or Papal, 
 in hostility to the kingdom of God. 
 
 What I propose in this paper is, to examine the claims 
 of the non-predictive, or purely descriptive theory. And I 
 will let its advocates themselves explain it. For this purpose 
 I select the two most recent English expositors of this book. 
 In the Speaker's Conunetitary the late Archdeacon Lee thus 
 writes : 
 
 "The book of Revelation (says Ebrard) does not contain 
 passages of contingent events, but certain warnings and con- 
 solatory prophecies concerning the great leading /wr^^t which 
 make their appearance in the conflict between Christ and the 
 enemy. So full are its contents, that every one may learn more 
 
 * From the Expositor (1S89), vol. x. (3rd series), pp. 444-S6- 
 
 t The italics are mine. 
 
DESIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE. 27 
 
 against what disguises of the serpent one has to guard himself, 
 and how the afflicted Church at aU times receives its measure 
 of comfort and consolation. The imagery of the book (continues 
 Dr. Lee) naturally describes, in accordance with the whole spirit 
 of prophecy, the various conditions of the kingdom of God on 
 earth during its consecutive struggles against the prince of 
 this world. . . . The spiritual application is never exhausted, 
 but merely receives additional illustration as time runs on " 
 {Inirod.).* 
 
 Hear now Professor Milligan : 
 
 " It is a book which deals vjith. principles \ rather than particu- 
 lar events. The same remark, indeed, is applicable to all the 
 prophetic books of Scripture ; for these are for the most part 
 occupied with principles that are generally, even universally, 
 fulfilling them.selves in human life. . . . They are proclamations 
 of eternal truths — of the sovereignty of God, of His super- 
 intendence of the world, of His approbation of good, of His 
 hatred of evil, of the fact that, notwithstanding all the apparent 
 anomalies around us. He is conducting to final triumph His own 
 plan for the establishment of His righteous and perfect kingdom. 
 It is well therefore that prophecy should be uttered to a large 
 extent in general language. The men of one age see it fulfilled 
 in what passes around them ; the men of another age do the 
 same. The struggle between the principles of good and evil 
 marks all time. It returns in every age, and God is always the 
 same God of judgment." t 
 
 To do justice to this theory is far from easy, from the 
 vague way in which its advocates express themselves. But 
 one or two things seem obvious. 
 
 * Dr. Lee calls this the spiritual view of the book ; but what his 
 own principle of interpretation is it is difficult to discover, for his 
 exposition consists of little else than a catena of interpretations which 
 he himself does not accept. 
 
 f The italics in this extract are mine. 
 
 X Popular Commentary on the Neiv Testament (Dr. Schaflf's) : 
 vol. iv., " Revelation." 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1. Was this book" written for no other purpose than to 
 proclaim the sovereignty of God, His superintendence of 
 the world, His approbation of good and hatred of evil, and 
 how, in spite of anomalies. He is conducting to final triumph 
 His own plan for establishing a righteous kingdom ? Were"^ 
 these first principles, these elementary truths, of all revealed 
 religion so obscurely expressed and so insufficiently enforced 
 in other parts of Scripture, that it needed a book of such 
 complicated structure and such extreme diff.culty of inter- 
 pretation, to make them clearer and more impressive? 
 Why, they are themselves infinitely plainer than the book 
 which we are told was written to enforce them. What- 
 ever may be thought of other theories, this at least will 
 never do. 
 
 2. It is scarcely self-consistent. Its advocates seem to 
 oscillate between the predictive and non-predictive view of 
 its contents. At one time we are told not to look for 
 actual history in it; but anon they say it "deals rather 
 with principles than particular events. The same remark," 
 adds Dr. Milligan, "apphes to all the prophetic books of 
 Scripture, which for the most part are occupied with prin- 
 ciples. It is well therefore that prophecy should be uttered 
 to a large extent in general language." Now, what is the 
 use of this constant guarding against looking for " historical 
 events" in prophecy? The question is. Are there any 
 such ? That there are, your own language admits ; for you 
 say it is only " for the most part " and " to a large extent " 
 that it deals in "general principles," and that it deals 
 "rather" in these — of course implying that it does deal, 
 to some extent, in "historical events." And yet we are 
 warned not to look in prophecy for such events. 'l"l>o one 
 question clearly should be, What is and what is not pre- 
 dictive ? That is a purely exegetical question ; and, tried 
 
DESIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE. 29 
 
 by this test, it is hard to see how any other than a predictive 
 design this book can possibly have. The very first words 
 of the book speak for themselves : " The book of the 
 Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to 
 shew unto His servants the things which must shortly come 
 to pass " ; and a very unusual blessing is pronounced, and 
 in the next words, upon "him that readeth, and them that 
 hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things 
 which are written therein : for the tune is at hand." If this 
 does not mean that definite historical events were about to 
 happen, for which the churches were warned to look, what 
 can we make of such language ? But is not our Lord's 
 prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem full of concrete 
 historical predictions ? And the apostle's prophecy of " the 
 man of sin " — whatever it may mean — does that not bristle 
 with concrete historical predictions ? To what purpose, 
 then, is it to say that prophecy deals " for the most part " 
 with general principles ? If the Apocalypse is not such a 
 book, it is entirely beside the mark. 
 
 3. This theory, in its systematic form, is, so far as I 
 know, entirely novel. I am not aware of one commentary 
 on the Apocalypse constructed on this principle until to- 
 wards the close of the last and early in the present century, 
 when a tide of anti-supernaturalism set in upon the Church, 
 especially in Germany, begetting a rationalistic criticism 
 that explained away both miracles and prophecy. But if 
 it be asked how to explain the rise of this novel theory 
 among believing expositors, I ascribe it to despair of finding 
 in history any events to correspond with the predictions, 
 suggesting at length the question, What if it was never 
 meant to predict historical events at all ? May not its sole 
 design be to hold forth in bold relief, and under the guise 
 of old historic foes of the kingdom of God — Egypt, Babylon, 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Jerusalem — the ever-recurring assaults upon the kingdom 
 of darkness ? 
 
 The ablest and most ingenious exposition of this scheme 
 of interpretation is that of the late Dr. Arnold, in his two 
 sermons on the interpretation of prophecy.* Since his 
 time the anti-predictive theory of apocalyptic interpretation 
 seems to have taken hold of a class of English interpreters 
 of both Old and New Testament prophetic Scripture. 
 To bring this theory to the test I know not any better way 
 than to try it on the commentaries already referred to. To 
 Dr. Lee I need not refer, because, as already said, his 
 exposition of the prophetic part of the book gives no clear 
 indication of how his theory comes out at all. But my 
 esteemed friend Dr. Milligan is a pleasant contrast to this, 
 his exposition being rigidly exegetical from first to last — 
 the text and the symbols being explained with elaborate 
 minuteness, and adhering with admirable fidelity to what 
 he takes to be the one object of the book, to explain 
 and illustrate great " general principles " — not to predict 
 at all. 
 
 Thus far I had written two years ago, when, on receiving 
 Dr. Dods' Introduction to the New Testament,^ I found ]_)r. 
 Milligan's theory rejected in terms even more sweeping : 
 
 " A still more efTectiuil evasion \ of the difficulties attaching to 
 any historical interpretation, whether Praeterist, Futurist, or con- 
 tinuously Historical, is suggested by Dr. Milligan, who proposes 
 that we should read the book as a representation of ideas rather 
 than events. It embraces, he thinks, the whole period of the 
 
 * Sermons on the Interpretation of Scripture, 3rd cd., 1878, pp. 
 
 333-94- 
 
 ■j- "Theological Educator" series, edited by Rev. W. R. Nicoll. 
 
 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1S88.) 
 
 \ Not of course intentional. Dr. Dods would admit. 
 
DESIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE. 31 
 
 Christian dispensation ; but within this period it sets before the 
 reader the action of great principles, and not special incidents. 
 It is meant to impress the reader with the idea that many years 
 of judgment, of trial, of victory must pass over the Church before 
 the end comes. The end, indeed, is spoken of as near ; but this 
 results from the impression which could not but be received by 
 the early Church, that now that Christ had actually come the 
 end was virtually present. 'The book thus becomes to us, not a 
 history of either early or mediaeval or last events, written of 
 before they happened, but a spring of elevated encouragement 
 and holy joy to Christians in every age.' It exhibits the Church 
 of Clirist in its conflict, preservation, and victory ; and it sees 
 these through the forms and in the colours presented to the 
 writer's imagination by what he himself had seen and experienced, 
 and by his knowledge of the Old Testament and of our Lord's 
 discourses. It is not a political pamphlet disguised, but a vision 
 of the Church's necessary fortunes as the body of her Lord, and 
 His representative on eartti. Babylon therefore is not pagan 
 Rome, but the apostate Church of all ages, described in a highly 
 elaborated picture, of which the outlines had already been drawn 
 by the prophets. This system of interpretation has its attractions, 
 but is certainly (i) out of keeping with the general purpose of 
 apocalyptic literature, and (2) fails to present a sufficient motive 
 for its composition, and (3) a sufficiently definite guide through 
 its intricacies " (pp. 243, 244). 
 
 Of the three objections to which I have attached figures, 
 I have dealt pretty fully with the second and third. But 
 while it is true (according to the first) that it is out of 
 keeping — indeed, glaringly so — with the general purpose of 
 apocalyptic literature, I must guard against the abuse to 
 which that phrase is liable. 
 
 Of the prophetical books of Scripture, those of Daniel in 
 the Old Testament and Revelation in the New difier widely 
 from all the rest. In both books the subject treated of is 
 the kingdom of God oppressed by hostile worldly powers ; 
 in both books successive periods in the history of this 
 
32 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 struggle are definitely though symbolically predicted; in 
 both the protracted character of the struggle, as well as the 
 final overthrow of these hostile powers and the triumphant 
 establishment of the kingdom of God, are set forth to cheer 
 the hearts of the faithful ; while in the latter book the 
 chronology of the conflict in its successive stages is specified 
 with a marvellous minuteness of detail, perhaps befitting 
 the last word of Divine revelation. There is nothing in 
 the least like this in the other prophetical books ; and 
 this characteristic is adequately expressed by the word 
 "apocalyptic." 
 
 But such hold did this feature of the book of Daniel take 
 upon the Jewish mind after the captivity, groaning under 
 successive oppressions, that it gave birth to productions of 
 the same character, holdmg forth the expected redemption 
 according unto the conception of their several writers ; and 
 so fascinating was this kind of literature that, even after the 
 New Testament " Revelation " appeared, similar writings — 
 or mixtures, rather, of it and Jewish works of this kind — 
 were sent forth. The consequence of this has been, that 
 modern critics have come to mass up all such writings, 
 from Daniel to Revelation and onwards, under the common 
 name of " apocalyptic literature." I cannot assent to this. 
 Any one who compares the Book of Daniel of the Old 
 Testament and the Apocalypse of the New must see at a 
 glance that they stand or fall together ; that the New Testa- 
 ment Apocalypse is expressly intended as a secjuel to and 
 completion of the disclosures in Daniel about the four 
 empires : so that if the Book of Daniel is not a genuine 
 and authentic work, neither is the New Testament Apoca- 
 lypse ; whereas if this last book of the New Testament be 
 indeed " the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave 
 unto Him," to forewarn the Church of coming events, so 
 
DESIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE. 33 
 
 also is \\s, prodrojnus, the Book of Daniel. In fact, nothing 
 could express the connexion between the two books more 
 neatly than the phrase of Mede, that Daniel is Apocalypsis 
 contracta, while the Apocalypse is Daniel protrada. To 
 mass up these two books therefore with that heap of writings 
 in imitation of them called " apocalyptic literature," ranging 
 from the merest rubbish up to those of more or less preten- 
 sions to respectability, is not to be endured. 
 
 (The best known of these are the books called " Second 
 Esdras " in our English Apocrypha and the " Book of 
 Enoch." A pretty full account of both will be found in 
 the 'Encydopcedia Britannica, 9th ed., art. " Apocalyptic 
 Literature," especially of the Book of Enoch. For the 
 English reader the most serviceable version of it is one 
 made by Professor Schodde of Ohio. — Andover, 1882,) 
 
 But what is to be said to the critics of the modern school, 
 who freely admit that historical events, and not mere ideas, 
 are the proper subject of this book, and insist therefore 
 that "all interpretation not strictly historical must be ex- 
 cluded " ? * But so far from being predictive in any legiti- 
 mate sense of the word, they find them all living in the 
 near distance to that of the writer, and some of them in the 
 course of actual occurrence in his time, requiring therefore 
 no higher inspiration than keen insight into the signs of 
 the times. So confident are such critics that they have at 
 length got the true "key " to the Apocalypse in their hands, 
 that they are bold enough to affirm that "the matter of 
 the book is neither obscure nor mysterious," and " without 
 being paradoxical, we may affirm that the Apocalypse is the 
 most intelligible book of the New Testament!"! With 
 
 * Encyclopadia Britannica (9th edition), art. "Revelation," by 
 Professor Harnack. 
 + Ibid. 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 these critics, everything exegetical in the interpretation of 
 this book is "settled" and "beyond dispute." This is not 
 the stage of our subject at which we can examine their 
 interpretations in detail, but when we come to " The 
 Structure of the Apocalypse," it will soon be seen that their 
 " key," at least, will not do much to help us. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ADDENDUM. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S ATTACK ON THE 
 APOCALYPSE. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S ATTACK ON THE 
 APOCALYPSE. 
 
 [Sir William Hamilton, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the 
 University of Edinburgh, was an accomplished classical scholar, a 
 profound metaphysician, and an omnivorous reader — equally at home 
 in German, French, and Italian. In fact, what was said of Professor 
 Whewell was equally applicable to him, — that knowledge was his forte 
 and omniscience his foible. His literary reputation was made by his 
 elaborate articles in the Edinburgh Revieiv, when it was in its palmiest 
 days. They were full of literary interest, and some of them were 
 treatises, and the most valuable of them were re-issued by himself in 
 a massive 8vo volume of nearly 900 closely printed pages, entitled, 
 "Discussions in Philosophy and Religion," etc. In temper he was 
 too much of an Ishmaelite : he could ill brook contradiction ; and his 
 pen, in replying to an opponent, was too often dipped in gall. The 
 attack, to which the following was a reply, occurs incidentally in an 
 article on "The Right of Dissenters to Admission to the English 
 Universities," and my only reason for reprinting it here is that it gives 
 a number of curious and interesting biographical facts which it took 
 me a good deal of time to hunt out, and which should not go quite out 
 of sight.] 
 
 " How could Mr. Pearson make any opinion touching 
 the Apocalypse matter of crimination against Semler 
 and Eichhorn ? Is he unaware that the most learned 
 and intelligent of Protestant [of Calvinist] * divines have 
 
 * The bracketed words were added by Sir William in a subsequent 
 edition. 
 
38 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the 
 Revelation? The following rise first to our recollection. 
 Erasmus, who may in part be claimed by the Refor- 
 mation, doubted its authenticity. Calvin and Beza de- 
 nounced the book as unintelligible, and prohibited the 
 pastors of Geneva from all attempt at interpretation ; for 
 which they were applauded by Joseph Scaliger, Isaac 
 Casaubon, [and our countryman Morus, to say nothing of 
 Bodinus, etc.] Joseph Scaliger [of the learned the most 
 learned], rejecting also the Epistle of James, did not believe 
 the Apocalypse to be the writing of St. John, and allowed 
 only two chapters to be comprehensible ; while Dr. South 
 [a great Anglican authority] scrupled not to pronounce it 
 a book (we quote from memory) that either found a man 
 mad or left him so." — {Discussmts in Philosophy, etc., 
 p. 506.)* 
 
 This assault upon the Apocalypse was altogether gratui- 
 tous. Sir William had a sufficiently good case against his 
 opponent — " the Rev. George Pearson, Christian Advocate 
 in the University of Cambridge " — who, to show " the 
 danger of abrogating the religious tests and subscriptions 
 which are at present required from persons proceeding to 
 degrees in the universities," had launched out in his 
 pamphlet into a crude enough statement of the errors 
 which have been broached by German professors regarding 
 the books of the Bible ; the whole being wound up with 
 the following sentence on the Apocalypse : — " Eichhorn 
 
 * The words enclosed in brackets have been added (in 1852) to the 
 original statement as it appeared in the Edinburgh Rcviciv ; showing 
 that, though the paragraph has been carefully revised, it has in no 
 respect been corrected, and that Sir "William Hamilton, after the lapse 
 of nearly twenty years, is in theological matters as careless of his 
 reputation for accuracy as ever he was. 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 39 
 
 pronounces the Revelations to be a drama, representing the 
 fall of Judaism and Paganism ; while Semler condemned 
 it entirely as the work of a fanatic." If this statement 
 deserved any notice at all, as bearing on the test question, 
 which we hardly think it did, it might have been enough to 
 say, that the man who thus expresses what Semler has said 
 on the Apocalypse must have taken his information at 
 second hand ; that to mix up Semler, as adverse to the 
 canonical authority of the Apocalypse, with Eichhorn, who 
 both held its canonical authority and published an exposi- 
 tion of it, was more like a special pleader than an impartial 
 writer ; and that, even admitting the case to be as stated, 
 it was not sufficient to support the conclusions founded 
 upon it. This would have sufficed for our author's argu- 
 ment, and thus far we could have gone heartily along with 
 him. But so favourable an opportunity of showing his 
 Apocalyptic lore, of having a thrust at the book itself, and 
 relieving himself of his superfluous Ishmaelism, was not to 
 be lost. Hence this strange paragraph on the Apocalypse, 
 which we are now to take up in detail. 
 
 I. "How," asks Sir William, "could Mr. Pearson make 
 any opinion touching the Apocalypse matter of crimination 
 against Semler and Eichhorn .? Is he unaware that the 
 most learned and intelligent of Protestant, of Calvlnist divines, 
 have almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the 
 Revelation ? " 
 
 On this assertion we make the following remarks : — 
 Pirst, It is not true. We challenge Sir William Hamilton 
 or any man to prove it. Second, Though all the authorities 
 adduced had questioned or denied " the canonicity of the 
 Revelation," they are no proper representatives of " almost 
 all the most learned and intelligent Protestant and Calvinist 
 divines." Sir William's list of authorities is an absurd one 
 
40 SIR WILLTAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 for his point ; for, with the exception of Calvin and Beza 
 (of Erasmus we shall speak presently), not one of those 
 named would naturally be thought of as an authority in a 
 question of this nature, a question which lay out of the 
 region of their special studies. Calvin and Beza, if correctly 
 reported, are entitled to great weight ; but even they do 
 not quite stand for all the "learning and intelhgence of 
 Protestant and Calvinist " theology on this question. But, 
 Third, Even Sir William's witnesses must, on his own 
 showing, be put out of court, with the single exception of 
 Erasmus. For, whereas the thing " doubted or denied by 
 almost all the most learned and intelligent of Protestant, of 
 Calvinist divines," is, according to our author, the carionicity 
 of the Revelation, he brings in his witnesses to speak to 
 quite another point — namely, whether people are able to 
 understand this confessedly mysterious book. On that 
 point, some strong, and, as we think, rash things have been 
 said by many who yet never questioned the canonicity of 
 the book. When Sir William, therefore, introduces them 
 to us, to inform us that they could make nothing of the 
 Apocalypse, we just walk them out again, as useless for his 
 purpose. One, indeed — Joseph Scaliger — is made to speak 
 to the authorship of the book, which comes nearer to Sir 
 William's point. But even this does not settle the question 
 of its canonicity; for though, if the beloved disciple was 
 the writer, its canonicity is of course established, every one 
 knows that some eminent critics have ascribed this book to 
 another John, who nevertheless maintain its canonicity. 
 Thus Sir William's own witnesses are made by himself to 
 disappear from the stage, with the single exception of 
 Erasmus, of whom he can only say, that he " may in part 
 be claimed by the Reformation," having been neither a 
 " Calvinist nor a Protestant divine." 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 41 
 
 2. What Sir William says of Erasvms is correct enough, 
 that he " doubted the authenticity " of the Apocalypse. 
 But the value of this doubt remains to be investigated. 
 Here we shall simply translate from Beza's Prolegomena to 
 the Apocalypse : — " As some have long since doubted 
 the authority of this book, I shall first briefly demolish the 
 arguments usually employed on that side, and state my 
 own views. I will give the arguments as they have been 
 studiously and industriously collected by Erasmus, whose 
 own Judgfnent, however, on this as on many other points, 
 seems to me so wavering, that one cannot discover what he 
 really thought, except that he seemed inclined at length to 
 believe that some kind of authority belonged to this book, 
 though not what attaches to the books which have been 
 received without controversy." With this we leave Sir 
 William's reference to be taken for what it is worth. On 
 a question of mere criticism, the opinion of Erasmus is 
 entitled to the greatest weight. But those who read his 
 arguments, as stated by himself, and as reported by Beza, 
 will see at once that other considerations, quite as much or 
 rather more than critical, influenced Erasmus in his doubts 
 about this book ; and we do him no wrong when we say, 
 that on these other considerations Erasmus is entitled 
 to no more weight than any other student of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 3. " Calvin and Beza denounced the book as unintelligible, 
 and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from all attempt at 
 interpretation." This we have no hesitation in pronouncing 
 a scandalous statement. It is notorious that both Calvin 
 and Beza held the Apocalypse to be a canonical book. If 
 Sir William did not know that, he should have let the 
 subject alone till he was better informed ; but if he did, it 
 was most improper and offensive to say, that " Calvin and 
 
42 S/J? WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 Beza denounced the Apocalypse." Even though neither of 
 them had thought it could be explained, we may be quite 
 certain, from their known reverence for all that they held 
 to be the word of God, that they would never " denounce " 
 it, in any legitimate sense of that term ; and, therefore, we 
 charge Sir William with selecting obnoxious phraseology, 
 on purpose to create a prejudice against the Apocalypse 
 through the aid of two of the greatest names in the Reformed 
 Church. But, further, we challenge Sir William Hamilton 
 to produce, from the writings of either Calvin or Beza, a 
 particle of evidence in support of his assertion. We do not 
 refer here to the absurd statement about the prohibition 
 issued l)y them to the Genevese pastors. That, we suppose, 
 will be fairly given up as a flourish of trumpets. But we 
 mean their denouncing, or even pronouncing it unintelligible. 
 As to Beza, not to speak of his running explanatory notes 
 upon it, which are nearly as many and as long as on any 
 other book of the New Testament, the following words 
 from his Prolegomena may sufiice to put Sir William 
 Hamilton to shame. After repelling the objections to its 
 canonical authority and apostolic authorship, he says : — 
 " As to the book itself, although I confess myself one to 
 whom these mysteries are very obscure, yet, when I observe 
 the name of the prophetic Spirit everywhere conspicuous, 
 and perceive not the traces merely, but the sentiments, and 
 even the very words, of the ancient prophets in this book ; 
 when T behold throughout clear and most magnificent 
 acknowledgments both of the divinity of Christ and of our 
 redemption ; when, in fine, of the p-edictions ivhich it contains, 
 some have been manifestly fulfilled, as, for example, those 
 relating to the destruction of the Asiatic churches, and to the 
 kingdom of that harlot that sittcth upon the seven lulls, 1 
 come to this conclusion, that it zvas the design of the Holy 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 43 
 
 Ghost to collect into this most precious Book such of the 
 predictions of the ayicient prophets as remained to be fulfilled 
 after the coming of Christ, and to add to these such others as 
 he deemed to be of importance to us. Very great obscurity, I 
 acknowledge, there is in them ; but this is nothing new in 
 the writings of the prophets, and especially Ezekiel. Further, 
 it is a shame that, engrossed with our ozvn private affairs, we 
 do not study these matters more attentively, and tvatch those 
 daily evolutions of the provide?ice of God in the admitiistration 
 of His Church. In a word, the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, 
 has tempered the light of the prophecies to what He fore- 
 saw it would be for the good of the Church to know. // 
 remains, therefore, that men should search these mysteries of 
 a holy God, so far as it is permitted and profitable, ivith 
 godly fear ; but, at the same time, that all, both those 
 who comprehend, and those who comprehend not, the 
 divine mysteries contained in this Book, should rather 
 adore thein, than, as some do, either deride them on the 
 one hand, or, on the other, pollute them with fanatical 
 comments." 
 
 So much for Beza. As to Calvin, any one even moder- 
 ately acquainted with his " Institutes " can rebut Sir William's 
 statement for himself But we shall require to return to 
 this ere we have done with Sir William's next assertion, 
 which, as it contains more misstatements than lines, and 
 nearly as many as words, it will be necessary to take up 
 piecemeal. 
 
 4. " For which," — that is, for " denouncing the Apoca- 
 lypse as unintelligible, and prohibiting the pastors of Geneva 
 from all attempt at interpretation," — " they " (Calvin and 
 Beza) "were applauded hy Joseph Scaliger. " 
 
 We are sorry to be obliged to say that this is false. As 
 to Beza, we challenge Sir William Hamilton to prove that 
 
44 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 Scaliger applauded him for anything whatever touching the 
 Apocalypse. The truth seems to be that Sir William, eager 
 to communicate that important piece of information about 
 Calvin and the Apocalypse, which every reader of Bishop 
 Newton's " Dissertations on the Prophecies " knows perfectly 
 well, thought he could not be far wrong in letting Beza 
 divide the honour with him. These reformers were such 
 Siamese twins that anything which the one did, or was 
 said to have done, might safely enough be ascribed to the 
 other, which would give him the benefit of two names on 
 his side instead of one. Or, perhaps, our author was so 
 accustomed to associate the one with the other that, having 
 written " Calvin," the words " and Beza " seemed a neces- 
 sary adjunct, and slipped from his pen quite unconsciously. 
 Be this as it may, until he shall produce his authority for a 
 statement so directly in the teeth of the extract we have 
 given from Beza himself, we must take the liberty of 
 pronouncing it a calumnious fiction. 
 
 But, even as respects Calvin, we challenge Sir William 
 Hamilton to prove that Scaliger applauded him for pro- 
 hibiting the interpretation of the Apocalypse, — applauded 
 him for denouncing the Apocalypse as unintelligible, — or 
 even applauded him for saying that Jie himself did not 
 understand the Apocalypse. All that Scaliger is ever alleged 
 to have said is, that Calvin showed his wisdom in not 
 commenting on the Apocalypse. Now, admitting that Scaliger 
 said this — which we do not, and that the statement is 
 entitled to all the weight which the prodigious learning of 
 Joseph Scaliger might be supposed to lend to it — the 
 reverse of which we shall show to be the case — what does 
 it prove against the Apocalypse ? Wliy, nothing but that 
 Calvin, conscious that he was not able to throw that light 
 upon the Apocalypse which he had done upon the other 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 45 
 
 books of Scripture on which he commented, was wise 
 enough not to meddle with it. But that Calvin took 
 credit to himself on this score, by no means follows from 
 the mere fact of his letting it alone. He did not comment 
 on Judges, nor on Ruth, nor on Samuel, nor on Kings, nor 
 on Esther, nor on Nehemiah, nor on Ezra, nor on Proverbs, 
 nor on Ecclesiastes, nor on the Song of Solomon. On the 
 other hand, he appeals to the Apocalypse, not merely in 
 illustration, but in proof of important doctrines repeatedly in 
 his " Institutes," just as he does to other books of canonical 
 Scripture. And as Whitby and other commentators have 
 expressly told us that diffidence of their own judgment in 
 the interpretation of prophetic mysteries, and not any wish 
 to disparage that blessed book of Scripture, was the sole 
 reason of their not commenting on the Apocalypse, 
 why should not Calvin, who so often does honour to 
 that book, have the benefit of the same explanation? 
 If so, then Scaliger's statement, supposing he uttered 
 it, and allowing it all the deference which can be claimed 
 for it, makes not one feather's weight against the Apoca- 
 lypse. 
 
 But now, did Scaliger say what is ascribed to him about 
 Calvin and the Apocalypse? and, if so, is it worth a 
 moment's attention ? It has been so often referred to as 
 a thing undoubted and entitled to some weight — from 
 Bishop Newton down to Dr. Henry of Berlin, in his " Life 
 of Calvin " * — that it may be worth while to reduce it to its 
 proper dimensions. 
 
 Be it observed, then, that in Scaliger's own published 
 writings there is not a word on the subject. The statement 
 
 * Leben Johann Calvins, von Paul Henry, I. xv. 347,348. (Hamb. 
 1835.) 
 
46 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 in question occurs in a little book entitled Scaligeriana,* 
 a collection of his casual observations, or table-talk, on 
 books, authors, and literature in general, taken down, it is 
 said, from his own lips, and afterwards published. How 
 far we can rely on these reported observations as having 
 actually proceeded from Scaliger's lips, or at least in the 
 very form in which they are there given, we shall leave our 
 readers to judge from the following account of its origin and 
 history, which, as that of Hallam is inaccurate,! we shall 
 take from an old French work, whose circumstantial narra- 
 tive carries internal evidence of substantial truth : — Two 
 brothers of the name of De Vassan, French Protestants, 
 went to Leyden to study, had daily access to Scaliger, and 
 took down everything curious which fell from his lips. On 
 returning home, they turned Papists, and made over their 
 collections to two persons of the name of Du Puy, who 
 handed them to one Serrau, who left a copy to his son 
 Isaac, who gave it to M. IDaille — son of the great Daille 
 — who, for his own convenience, arranged the articles in 
 alphabetical order : from him Isaac Vossius got hold of it 
 when in Paris, and had it published at the Hague, under 
 the title of " Scaligeriana." t Three years after this there 
 came out another '•^ Scaligerana^^ consisting of the collec- 
 tions of a Dr. Vertunien, taken down by him while physician 
 to two gentlemen with whom Scaliger then lived. These 
 papers, after the writer's death, had lain in obscurity for 
 many years, when they were purchased by an advocate of 
 the name of Sigogne, and published, with a preface and 
 notes by M. Le Fevre, under the name of "Scaligerana 
 
 * Scaligcriana : sive Excerpta ex ore Josephi Scaligeki, per F.F.P.P. 
 The copy before us is the second edition, published at the Hague, 
 l2mo, 1668. 
 
 t "Lit. of Eur." i. 510. % See note *. 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 47 
 
 Prima " — by way of asserting their priority to the other col- 
 lections which had got the start of it in pubKcation, which 
 other collections it reprinted as an appendix, under the title 
 of "Scaligerana SecundaJ^ as entitled only to the second 
 place, though first issued. This last is a mixture of French 
 and Latin, while the other is all Latin.* Such is the book 
 from which this famous statement is taken. 
 
 But our readers may now wish to have the statement 
 itself It occurs under the head " Calvin," where, after 
 praising his commentary on Daniel and his " Institutes," he 
 is made to say, in French, " Calvin did very well to write 
 nothing on the Apocalypse'^ After a few additional remarks 
 in the same commendatory strain, the French stops, and 
 the Latin begins, which makes it doubtful whether what 
 follows, though printed in the same paragraph, was not 
 dropped on some other occasion. " The Papists run down 
 Calvin, only because they see his admirable genius and 
 their own inability to come up to him as an interpreter 
 of Scripture. Oh, how well Calvin hits the sense of the 
 prophets ! None better. The genius and judgment of 
 Calvin were of the first order. He ivas wise not to write on 
 the Apocalypse.'' \ 
 
 * Baillet's " Jugemens des Savans sur les principaux Ouvrages des 
 Auteurs," Monnoyes edition (13 vols., l2mo, Amst. 1725). The above 
 particulars are taken from one of the notes with which the industrious 
 and accurate editor has enriched the work, — Vol. vi. pp. 244, 245. 
 The English Bayle takes its statement from the same source. — Vol. ix., 
 art. "Joseph Scaliger," 1739. 
 
 j" Calvin a trcs-bien faict de ne rien escrire sur I' Apocalypse. . . . • 
 Calvino Pontificii non maledicunt nisi quando vident praeclarum ejus 
 ingenium, et tam praeclare interpretari Scripturam ut ipsi non possint 
 ejus praestantiam assequi. O quam Calvinus bene assequitur mentem 
 Prophetarum ! nemo melius ; erat summum ingenium et judicium 
 Calvini. Sapit quod in Apocalypsin non scripsit." — Scaligeriana, pp. 
 60, 61 (ut supra). 
 
S/R WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 Now, we have two alternatives to offer to Sir William 
 Hamilton'regarding this reported saying of Scaliger's : either 
 to give it up, as being taken from a book which, however 
 curious, can have no claim to authority, after what we have 
 seen of its history ; or, to adhere to it, and then take along 
 with it, on the same authority, certain other sayings of 
 Scaliger regarding the Apocalypse, which are so contra- 
 dictory and senseless as to destroy themselves. Thus, in 
 the " Scaligerana Prima " he is made to say : " This I can 
 boast of, that I understand all those predictions which are 
 written in the Apocalypse, that truly canonical book, save 
 that chapter in which ' woe ' is repeated seven times ; for I 
 know not whether the time there meant be past or future." * 
 Now, compare with this the following extract — a mixture of 
 Latin and French — from the " Scaligeriana " : — "A certain 
 pastor of Montauban published a most learned commentary, 
 in four books, on the Apocalypse, which Scaliger gave to 
 Uitenbogard to read. The Syrian Church does not acknow- 
 ledge that book, though Scaliger has a Syriac version of it, 
 made by order of the Maronites, which the patriarch sent 
 him. / scarcely believe the apostle John to be the author of 
 the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse was written in Hebrew. 
 
 There was a minister at Castres who expounded 
 
 the whole Apocalypse Whatever was written on 
 
 the Apocalypse before the last forty years is worthless. 
 [Does not this imply that the events of that recent period- 
 
 * "Hoc possum gloriari me nihil ignorare eorum quae in Apocalypsi, 
 
 Canonico vcre libro, prophetice scribuntur, praeter illud caput in quo 
 .'I/O?' scpties rcpctitur; ignore enim idne tempus preeterierit, aut 
 futurum sit." — "Scaligerana Prima," p. 13. We are obliged to take this 
 extract from Bishop Newton (Dis.sert. xxiv.), as we have not been 
 able to get hold of the original, which, our readers will bear in mind, 
 is a different collection from the one first published, and which lies 
 before us. 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 49 
 
 had thrown a new Hght on the whole subject, in the 
 speaker's view?] In the Apocalypse there are only two 
 chapters which can be understood ; these are very plain., nor 
 can their meaning be disputed. Calvin was wise fiot to write 
 on the Apocalypse.^' * To complete the mess in which these 
 extracts leave Scaliger's opinions on the Apocalypse, one 
 has only to turn to the " Critici Sacri" (that well-known 
 voluminous collection of the most learned comments on the 
 Bible), where, at Rev. xvii. 5, will be found a paragraph 
 from Scaliger, in French, in which he is quoted as speaking 
 of what " the apostle " says and does not say in that verse, 
 as having no doubt at all about the Apocalypse being the 
 production of the apostle John ! 
 
 We may seem to have dwelt disproportionately on this 
 small matter ; but we thought it right, once for all, to put 
 down that summary way of disposing of the Apocalypse, by 
 reference to Scaliger's reported saying about Calvin, in 
 which, if Sir William Hamilton stands alone, it is only 
 because his extravagant exaggeration of it leaves him in 
 exclusive possession. But, 
 
 5. " For which " — denunciation of the Apocalypse, etc. 
 — " they (Calvin and Beza) were applauded by Isaac 
 Casaubon." 
 
 * " In Apocalypsin quidam pastor Montalbanensis eruditissimum 
 Commentarium edidit quatuor librorum, quern Scaliger dedit Utem- 
 bogardo legendum. Ecclesia Syriaca banc non agnoscit, quamvis 
 Scabger habeat Syriacam, que le Patriarche luy avoit envoyee, quam 
 Maronitae vertendum curarunt. Vix credo Joannem Apostolum 
 autorem esse Apocalypseos. L'Apocalypse a este escrite en Hebrew. 
 
 II y a eu un Ministre a Castres, qui a expose toute TApoca- 
 
 lypse Quidquid ante quadraginta annos scriptum est in 
 
 Apocalypsin, tout cela ne vaut rien. In Apocalypsi sunt tantum duo 
 capita qua; posstmt intelligi, sunt valde aperta nee potest eorum expositio 
 negari. Calvinus sapit quod in Apocalypsin non scripsit." — "Scali- 
 geriana,"^ pp. 10, 11. 
 
 4 
 
50 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 Where has Isaac Casaubon done this ? He was the 
 contemporary, and perhaps the equal of Scaliger ; spent his 
 days in editing and ilhistrating the most difficult Greek 
 classics ; and, with the exception of a small Greek Testa- 
 ment which he published in 1587, with notes (which, 
 however, go no farther than Acts), and " Exercitations on 
 Sacred and Ecclesiastical Matters," in reply to Baronius' 
 " Annals," wrote nothing theological that we arc aware of. 
 Now, in this latter work we have found the Apocalypse 
 twice, at least, quoted and reasoned from as Scripture, in 
 opposition to Romish doctrine ; and in one of these the 
 author, having dwelt upon Rev. xix. 15, speaks of what 
 " the Evangelist John immediately subjoins " in the following 
 verse. Until, therefore, Sir William produce his authority, 
 we must class this along with his other strange misstate- 
 ments. 
 
 6. " For which he was applauded — by our countryman, 
 Mortis^' Alexander Morus, here referred to, was born at 
 Castres, in Languedoc, in 16 16, where his father (the 
 Rev. Mr. More, a Scotchman), was principal of a divinity 
 college and pastor of a Protestant church. When little 
 more than twenty, he obtained by comparative trial the 
 Greek chair at Geneva, over competitors all nearly one-half 
 older than himself. Three years afterwards, he became 
 pastor and professor of theology in room of the celebrated 
 Spanheim, when translated to Leyden ; and under him the 
 famous F. Turretin studied for several years. Eut superior 
 as were his attainments in philology in that eminently 
 philological age, it was as a French preacher that he 
 acquired the greatest celebrity. From Geneva he was 
 called to a chair in Holland, where he got embroiled in the 
 famous controversy between Milton and Salmasius, as a 
 friend of the latter. From this he went to Paris as minister 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 51 
 
 of the Reformed Church, and died in 1670. Besides 
 sermons and expositions, he published several works which 
 show his high and accurate learning. The passages on 
 which our author founds are probably two which occur in his 
 " Calvinus," a discourse in praise of Calvin, and delivered 
 by Morus, as Rector of the College of Geneva, in 1648. In 
 one of these passages he is extolling Calvin as an expositor 
 above all the fathers ; and having said that he had eluci- 
 dated all the books of Scripture, from the first to the last, 
 he thus continues : " To the last, I say, nor do I except the 
 Apocalypse, which he handled not, because by not handling 
 it he gave the most beautiful commentary upon it " (p. 13). 
 In the other passage he is lauding Calvin for his modesty 
 and his moderation {modus). This last reigns, he says, 
 in all his works; and it was this which continually with- 
 held him from attempting to unravel the Apocalypse, an 
 occupation wnth which those who are eager to display their 
 ingenuity are above measure delighted (p. 49). 
 
 Now, if the reader would know what is not meant by 
 these sentences, he has only to observe, first, that in his 
 " Cause of God," or Genevese " Exercitations " on the 
 Authority, the Canon and Integrity, and the Perfection of 
 the Scriptures, in opposition to the views of the Romanists 
 (1653), — where, surely, if anywhere, we should expect to 
 find such sentiments, — not one word in the direction to 
 which Sir William Hamilton points is to be found; next, 
 that once and again, in his other writings, the Apocalypse 
 is referred to just as the other books of Scripture, as the 
 word of God ; and further, that in his " Notes on Certain 
 Passages of the New Testament" (1661), the Apocalypse 
 comes in for its share — a small share, indeed, because, as 
 will be seen from the extracts just given, he did not conceive 
 himself qualified to unravel its strictly prophetical portions. 
 
52 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 With these facts before us, what do the extracts convey 
 beyond this, — that in Morus's day, as in ours, many had 
 wasted their time and brains to no purpose, as he thought, 
 in attempting to open up the mysterious portions of this 
 book ; and that Calvin's moderation showed itself, as every- 
 where, so particularly in this, that what he was conscious 
 he could not succeed in, he did not attempt? In other 
 words, both Calvin and Morus had learnt what if Sir 
 William Hamilton had attained to he would never have 
 penned the paragraph in question — ^^ Nonou^ixpossumus.'" 
 
 7. "To say nothing of Bodinus, etc." We have now 
 reached the last of Sir William's laudators of Calvin and 
 Beza for the disparagement of the Apocalypse. 
 
 And who was this Bodinus ? John Bodin was a French 
 lawyer, who attained considerable celebrity as a literary 
 man in the sixteenth century. He was born at Angers in 
 1530, and died in 1596. On his political and scientific 
 writings the most extravagant praises have been lavished, 
 and the severest censures pronounced ; for neither his 
 admirers nor his enemies knew any measure in their treat- 
 ment of him. His dabblings in theology only revealed 
 how ill regulated his mind was on divine things. His 
 learning seems to have been of the kind which Festus 
 ascribed to Paul — the abundance of it somewhat turned his 
 head. We have before us his DcBmo7iomania Magorum, 
 which is just a mass of learned rubbish ; in the appendix 
 to which, so far as we had patience to wade through it, he 
 seems to maintain the reality of witchcraft on what he would 
 call natural principles.* He wrote a book which he never 
 dared to print, but copies of which were extensively circu- 
 
 * But as the Biographic Univcrsellc says of his "Theatre of 
 Universal Nature," it is a mixture of bad physics and dangerous 
 principles, 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 53 
 
 lated, consisting of a Dialogue on Religion between seven 
 persons * — a Deist, a Jew, a Romanist, a Lutheran, a 
 Calvinist, and some others, — in which, says the Biographie 
 Untverselle, the Christians are always beaten in the argu- 
 ment, the advantage being given occasionally to the Jews, 
 but mostly to the Deists. Hallam " conceives him to have 
 acknowledged no revelation but the Jewish " ; but the work 
 just referred to, says he, " was charged by turns with being 
 a Protestant, a Deist, a Sorcerer, a Jew, an Atheist." 
 
 What such a man thought of the Apocalypse, or of 
 Calvin's views of it, is not worth a moment's consideration. 
 But as Sir William's credulity is in this instance kept in 
 countenance by Dr. Henry, in his " Life of Calvin," it may 
 not be amiss to expose the wrong that has been done to 
 Calvin's memory by the statement in question. Dr. Henry 
 gives Bayk as his authority for the passage in question, and 
 Sir William probably found it there too ; f but wishing to 
 see in what connection it was introduced, and whether any 
 authority for the statement was given by Bodin in the work 
 quoted by Bayle, we turned to the treatise itself, ("An 
 Easy Way of Acquiring a Knowledge of History,") and 
 found it in the introduction to a chapter on the four 
 monarchies. This notion, says the author, of four empires, 
 however universally it has been taken up by Biblical inter- 
 preters, is an entire mistake. No doubt Daniel seems to 
 say as much, and it would be impious to dispute his state- 
 ments. But Daniel's obscure and ambiguous language may 
 be twisted in various ways ; " and in the interpretation of 
 the prophecies, I prefer to employ the law phrase, non liquet 
 (it is not clear), rather than rashly to put other people's 
 
 * " Colloquium Hcptaplomerum de abditis rerum sublimiuni arcanis." 
 "j" Dictiojtnaire Historique et Critique. Art. Calvin. 
 
54 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 opinions upon an author in matters which I do not under- 
 stand. And highly do I approve of Calvin^ s no less polite 
 than prudent speech to one who asked his opinion of the 
 Apocalypse : ^ I am quite ignorant,^ said he frankly, ' what so 
 obscure a writer means ; nor is it yet agreed among the 
 learned who and ivhat he zvas.' " * 
 
 It is strange that Dr. Henry should not only not have 
 suspected anything wrong here, but that he should have 
 followed it up with this remark : " Very characteristic of 
 Calvin this, whose clear acute understanding could find 
 nothing to work upon in this book, the mysterious phraseo- 
 logy of v/hich required a prophetic insight to which he 
 pretended not." t Bayle's observation shows more shrewd- 
 ness, implying some suspicion of Bodin's statement, though 
 insinuating in his usual way a reflection on the authority of 
 the canonical books. "I should like to know," says he, 
 after quoting the passage, " whether Calvin said this in any 
 of his works, or only in conversation : I should rather 
 suppose the latter than the former ; for it would have been 
 imprudent in a man like him to declare that it was not yet 
 fixed among the learned what sort of man it was who wrote 
 the Apocalypse." X 
 
 We have no hesitation in saying that there is not one 
 word of truth in this story ; and for the best of all reasons 
 — namely, that in his " Institutes " Calvin repeatedly quotes 
 the Apocalypse, and " the Apostle John " as its author. 
 
 * ''Ac valde mihi probatur Calvini non minus urbana quam priidens 
 oratio, qui de libro Apocalypseos sententiamrogatus, ingenue respondit, 
 se penitus ignorare quid velit tarn obscurus scriptor ; qui qualisque 
 fuerit nondum constat inter erud\los."—Mi't/ioc(iis ad facile ui His- 
 toriarimi Cot;;nHionem, cap. vii. p. 416. (Argent., 1699.) 
 
 I " Leben Calvins," i., p. 34S. 
 
 \ Rayle, Diclionnnire : Art. Calvin, p. 770. 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 55 
 
 without breathing a syllable of doubt either about its 
 canonicity or its authorship. We all know what stories 
 were trumped up by the Romanists about Luther, Melanc- 
 thon, Beza, Calvin, and all the Reformers. No matter how 
 malicious and how palpable the lie was, it served its purpose 
 at the time; and some of them constitute the stock-in- 
 trade of some nominal Protestants, who take an inexplicable 
 pleasure in parading whatever they can find prejudicial to 
 their character. No doubt this is one of these Romish 
 forgeries. Nobody can believe it except, those who prefer 
 hearsay allegations to a man's own published statements, or 
 such as, like Dr. Henry, take it on trust, without the least 
 inquiry, from a writer whose sceptical turn it too well suited 
 to pass it by, and who himself was indebted for it to one of 
 the same turn of mind. 
 
 So much for Bodinus. 
 
 8. ^^ Joseph Scaliger, of the learned the most learned, 
 rejecting also the Epistle of James, did not believe the 
 Apocalypse to be the writing of St. John, and allowed only 
 two chapters to be comprehensible." We have sufficiently 
 disposed of Scaliger already, and of the two comprehensible 
 chapters by anticipation ; and having nothing to do here 
 with the allusion to Scaliger's rejection of the Epistle of 
 James,* we now hasten to the last of Sir William Hamilton's 
 authorities against the Apocalypse. 
 
 * Here our author's information is taken, as before, from the 
 Scaligcriana. If the learned talker uttered what is there ascribed to 
 him, it does him no great credit. Luther said strong enough things 
 about the Epistle of James, and indeed his way of testing the books 
 of Scripture was sufficiently reprehensible, as is now universally 
 acknowledged. But when Scaliger charged the author' of this 
 Epistle with ^^ great impudence^'' — if indeed he did so, — the garrulous 
 vituperator seems to have been in one of those eminently splenetic 
 moods which were too usual with him. The passage is as follows : — 
 
56 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 9. " While Dr. South, a great Anglican authority, scrupled 
 not to pronounce it a book (we quote from memory) that 
 either found a man mad or left him so." 
 
 This well-known witticism of South is here quite correctly 
 reported ; but as Sir William's memory has reverted to it in 
 the phraseology which Newton has rendered so familiar to 
 his multitudinous readers, and in the same page of his 
 " Dissertations " which contains the passage about Scaliger's 
 commendation of Calvin, it is probable that our author has 
 been originally indebted for it to the popular Bishop of 
 Bristol, rather than the facetious Prebendary of Westminster. 
 " A celebrated wit and divine of our own church (says 
 Bishop Newton) hath not scrupled to assert that that book 
 either finds a man mad or makes him so." * The remark 
 of South to which reference is made occurs in the sermon 
 on "The Nature and Measure of Conscience," and is as 
 follows : " 3. Because the light of natural conscience is in 
 many things defective and dim, and the internal voice of 
 God's Spirit is not always distinguishable, above all, let a 
 man attend to the mind of God, uttered in his revealed 
 Word: I say, his revealed Word. By which, I do not 
 mean that mysterious, extraordinary, and of late so much 
 
 "Jacobi epistola plena est Judaismis; non erat recepta temporibus 
 Eusebii." (But Eusebius himself quotes from it, and calls it "the 
 Scripture.") " Est ab hominc Catechumeno composita, quam imperitus 
 ex omnibus ahis Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis Canonicis collegit ; et 
 initio habet mirum de 12 tribubus; nescio quid dicam, sed magna est 
 impudentia vocasse se Jacobum qui non est." — Scaligcriana, p. 167. 
 The internal evidence here relied on against the Epistle has been 
 abundantly refuted. A difficulty in the early church as to which of 
 the Jameses was the author of the Epistle, and the apparent counten- 
 ance given by it to the merit of works, were the sole cause of the 
 early doubts about this Epistle. 
 
 * " Dissert, on the Prophecies, " No. xxiv.. p. 2. 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 57 
 
 studied book called the Revelation, and which, perhaps, 
 the more it is studied the less it is understood, as generally 
 either finding a man cracked or making him so ; but I 
 mean those other writings of the prophets and apostles, 
 which exhibit to us a plain, sure, perfect, and intelligible 
 rule — a rule that will neither fail nor distract those that 
 make use of it." * On this passage, as quoted for the 
 purposes of Sir William Hamilton, we submit the following 
 remarks : — 
 
 First, Supposing it to express the deliberate judgment of 
 South on the canonical claims of the Apocalypse, it is 
 absurd to adduce it as the verdict of "a great Anglican 
 authority." In his own line, South is inferior to none. As 
 a preacher, his intellectual power, his clearness and force 
 of language, his command of sarcasm and wit, were almost 
 unrivalled. But, in reckoning up the authorities on a 
 Biblical question, who would ever think of naming him ? 
 and, on such a point, to designate him as Sir William 
 Hamilton has done would only be to get laughed at. 
 
 Second, We have the best of all evidence to prove that 
 South never meant, by this witty remark of his, to cast 
 the least reflection upon the canonical authority of the 
 Apocalypse. The texts of three of his piiblished sermons 
 are taken from the Apocalypse. The subject of one of these 
 discourses — and a powerful one it is — is "The Happiness of 
 being kept from the Hour of Temptation " ; and the text is 
 Rev. iii. 10, "Because thou hast kept the word of my 
 patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, 
 which is coming upon all the world to try the inhabitants 
 of the earth " {sic^. The second paragraph of the sermon 
 
 * " Sermons preached upon Several Occasions." By Robert South, 
 D.D. (Lond., 1845.) Vol. i., pp. 191, 192. 
 
58 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 begins thus : " The occasion of the words is indeed particular, 
 as containing in them a prediction of the sad and calatnitoics 
 estate of the Church, under the approaching reign of Trajan, 
 the Roman emperor; but," etc.* The subject of another 
 sermon is, " The Lineal Descent of Jesus of Nazareth from 
 David, by his blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary," a subject 
 which the preacher handles with his usual acuteness ; and 
 the text of it is Rev. xxii. i6, "I am the root and the off- 
 spring of David, and the bright and morning star." The 
 sermon begins thus : " The words here pitched upon by me 
 are the words of Christ now glorified in heaven. . . . The 
 nativity of Christ is certainly a compendium of the whole 
 goepei, in that it thus both begins and ends it, reaching from 
 the first chapter of St. Matthew to this last of the Revelation ; 
 which latter, although it be confessedly a book of mysteries and 
 a system of occult divinity, yet surely it can contain nothing 
 more mysterious and stupendous than the mystery here wrapped 
 up in the text, where we have Christ declaring Himself both 
 the root and the offspring of David."! The thing to be 
 observed here is not the explicit testimony borne to the full 
 canonical authority of the Apocalypse, or rather the use 
 made of it as Scripture without an allusion lo the doubts 
 even of others — that is obvious enough ; but the vindica- 
 tion of the Apocalypse from the objections taken to it in 
 consequence of its mysteriousness. It is mysterious, says 
 South, but not more so than the mystery of the Incarnation, 
 on which all salvation depends. No man, speaking thus, 
 could deliberately mean to disparage the Apocalypse. But 
 how, then, are we to explain the witticism of which Sir 
 William Hamilton and others make such a handle? We 
 are far from defending it. Coming from the pulpit, and 
 
 Vol. li. p. 27 {lit supra). t ^o'- '•> P- 507- 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 59 
 
 from one who both held it canonical Scripture and used it 
 as such, it was in the highest degree unbecoming and re- 
 prehensible. But if the question be, How are we to explain 
 it? we answer, — • 
 
 Third, It is beyond all doubt one of those severe 
 reflections upon the Commonwealth men, which South 
 could never resist introducing into his sermons whenever 
 he found an opportunity, or even a pretext for it. His 
 most pungent satire, his wittiest sallies, his occasional ap- 
 proaches to impassioned declamation, are reserved for this 
 theme ; and if by means of some spicy anecdote of Cromwell 
 and his preachers, he can hold up the whole party to con- 
 tempt, he is in his element. Now, it is well known that 
 among the Scriptural themes upon which the revolutionary 
 ferment set the serious minds of all friends of the Common- 
 wealth a-working was prophecy, and the Apocalyptic pro- 
 phecies in particular occupied a chief place. The press 
 teemed with works on this subject, some of them wild in 
 the extreme ; and the fierceness of the revolutionary flame 
 was unquestionably fanned to some extent by the Apo- 
 calyptic speculations in which some ardent supporters of 
 the antimonarchical party indulged. Of course this was 
 fitted to inspire such a mind as Souih's with distaste, not 
 to say disgust, at the whole subject. This is one of the 
 injuries which raw and wild speculations on prophecy 
 invariably inflict upon the prophetical portions of Scripture, 
 and it would be well if all students of prophecy would bear 
 it in mind. That South meant simply to express this 
 feeling, and to do it in a way which would inspire others 
 with the same, seems quite plain from the context. Speaking 
 of the defectiveness and dimness of the light of conscience, 
 and the difficulty of always distinguishing the internal voice 
 of God's Spirit, he bids us " above all, attend to the mind 
 
6o S/Ji WILLIAM HAMILTON'S ' 
 
 of God in His revealed Word"; and then, repeating his 
 words, he adds, " By this I do not mean that mysterious, 
 extraordinary, and of late so much studied book called the 
 Revelation," etc. Now, as nobody could suppose that by 
 God's revealed Word he meant the Apocalypse, it is plain 
 that this unexpected reference to that book is just lugged in 
 on purpose to have a hit at the crack-brained Apocalyptists, 
 as he doubtless regarded them, whom he would have left 
 to sink into oblivion had they not been guilty of the mortal 
 sin of disliking the arbitrary government of the Stuarts. 
 In saying this, we neither design to justify them nor to 
 condemn South for his political principles ; but merely to 
 show how, with South's intense political dislikes and caustic 
 humour, the temptation to come out with one of his charac- 
 teristic sallies would carry it over his sense of what was 
 due to the pulpit, and to what he himself regarded and 
 used as the Word of God.* 
 
 Here we close our exposure of the recklessness of Sir 
 William Hamilton, in his paragraph on the Apocalypse. 
 With the single exception of Erasmus, the weight of whose 
 doubts has been sufficiently considered, we have seen that 
 he is wrong in all his authorities against the canonicity of 
 the Apocalypse. Calvin owned it j Beza owned it ; Scaliger 
 
 * In his third Apocalyptic sermon — which we had not observed 
 till after we had expressed, in the above paragraph, our theory about 
 the Commonwealth-men — the author puts it beyond all doubt that he 
 had that party exclusively in view, by repeating, with more crushing 
 severity, but without the witticism, the very sentiment which has 
 been caught up and reiterated in so many circles to the prejudice of 
 the Apocalypse. The text is Rev. ii. l6, "Repent, or else I will 
 come unto thee quickly," etc. On this text, speaking of the opinion 
 of a learned man, that the predictions of this book were all designed 
 to have their completion within two hundred years after their delivery, 
 he says : " Now, if the judgment of this learned man stands, as it 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 6x 
 
 owned it — if we may take his own word for it above the 
 talk ascribed to him ; Casaubon owned it ; " our countryman, 
 Moms,'" owned it ; even Bodinus — if we may judge by his 
 quotations from it in his " Dasmonomania " — had the same 
 faith in it as in other portions of Scripture, which perhaps 
 was none at all ; and, finally, that " great Anglican authority," 
 Dr. South, owned it. Such blundering is shameful in one 
 who professes such an intimate acquaintance with the 
 literature of theology, and volunteers to act as a guide of 
 the blind, a light of those that are in darkness, an instructor 
 of the foolish, a teacher of babes. It is even ridiculous. 
 
 Here is the case. Some of the most distinguished 
 theologians have found in the Apocalypse what Peter found 
 in Paul's Epistles, hva-vo-qra, " things hard to be understood." 
 While entertaining not a doubt of its canonical authority, 
 and repeatedly quoting it as Holy Scripture^ they have been 
 unable to find their way through it as a prophetic delineation 
 of the fortunes of the Church, and have been candid enough 
 to say so. Sir William Hamilton meets with such acknow- 
 ledgments, in the course of his multifarious, but in theology 
 superficial and inaccurate, reading. He meets with them, 
 in hardly one instance, in their own works — for we must 
 suppose him to be an honest man — but in the references 
 
 hath the countenance of reason and the express words of the text, 
 then what must become of the bloody tenets of those desperate 
 wretclics who for these many years have been hammering of blood, 
 confusion, and rebellion out of this book, from a new fancy that they 
 have of Christ's coming? Thus ruling their lives not by precepts but 
 prophecies, and not being able to find any warrant for their actions in 
 the clear and express word of law or gospel, they endeavour to shelter 
 their villanies in the obscurities and shades of the Revelation — a book 
 intricate and involved, and for the most part never to be understood ; 
 and upon which, when wit and industry has done its utmost, the 
 best comment is but conjecture." (Vol. ii., p. 304.) 
 
62 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 made to them by other writers, some of them of the most 
 second-rate and untrustworthy character ; and these honest 
 acknowledgments are stupidly confounded with "doubts or 
 denials of the canonicity of the Revelation," proffered as 
 information to an ignorant antagonist, and introduced with 
 an expression of astonishment that he should need to be 
 told such things — said things being, with one solitary ex- 
 ception, a series of bungling misstatements ! Sir William's 
 benevolent eagerness to enlighten the ignorant outruns his 
 discretion. It did so rather notably once before, in the 
 publication of a pamphlet at a memorable moment, full of 
 learned illustrations, which somehow failed to convince 
 the parties for whose special illumination it was intended. 
 There was one formidable individual who did for Sir William 
 then, what our slender power has been quite sufficient to 
 do for him now — he showed him up as a theological 
 pretender. 
 
 Nor will the Apocalypse suffer from this or a hundred 
 such attacks. Even though the testimonies adduced against 
 it had been genuine, as we have found them apocryphal, 
 they are, with two exceptions, anything but formidable. 
 We could have furnished Sir William with a more serious 
 list. But over against these we could easily have placed an 
 array of authorities which every competent judge would 
 allow to be triumphantly superior, in point of weight, down 
 to the most recent and distinguished critics in Germany. 
 Much has the Apocalypse suffered, on the one hand, from 
 the wild comments which have been dignified with the 
 name of " Keys " and " Expositions," and on the other 
 from the severity with which the most modest attempts 
 to clear up its difficulties are by some denounced — not to 
 speak of the advantage taken of both by the enemies of 
 this book to hold it up to contempt. But in spite of all 
 
ATTACK ON THE APOCALYPSE. 63 
 
 this, it will vindicate its own claims, and continue to shine 
 in its own lustre ; it will command increasing interest, and 
 derive light from the march of events ; its incomparable 
 scenes, its celestial strains, its soul- stirring encouragements 
 and appalling denunciations, even the unearthly grandeur 
 of its language, will inspire its unsophisticated readers, 
 though unable to thread its mysterious mazes, with courage 
 to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold of eternal life 
 — will nerve the hosts of the Lord for the great conflict 
 between light and darkness, which is to issue in the rout 
 and ruin of the phalanx of evil — will tide the Church over 
 the last brief wave of trouble, and see it into unclouded 
 light, unruffled repose, and everlasting glory. 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF THE APOCALYPSE 
 AND ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 
 
" The secret things belong unto the Lord our God : but 
 those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our 
 children for ever, that we may do all the words of this 
 law." — Deut. xxix. 29. 
 
 "/ have yet many things to say unto you, but yc cannot 
 bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is 
 come, He will guide you into all the truth : . . . And He 
 
 SHALL DECLARE UNTO YOU THE THINGS THAT ARE TO 
 
 COME." — John xvi. 12, 13. 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF THE 
 APOCALYPSE. 
 
 The artistic structure of this book is one of its 
 most striking features. It stands out even in 
 its first sentence, announcing as it does Whose 
 it is — it is " the revelation of Jesus Christ " ; 
 from Whom received — God gave it to Him ; 
 for what purpose — " to shew unto His servants 
 the things which must shortly come to pass " ; 
 through whom communicated — " He sent and 
 signified it by His angel " (compare xxli. 8) ; 
 and to whom — " to His servant John." 
 
 After a salutation — in form quite unique, and 
 inexpressibly grand — the writer quietly tells his 
 readers where, how, and when he received this 
 revelation. He was in the isle of Patmos (a 
 little rocky island in the yEgean Sea) — banished, 
 probably, for his fidelity to Christ. It was 
 " the Lord's day," and " he was in the Spirit, — 
 his natural faculties in abeyance, and his whole 
 
68 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 inner man taken possession of by the Inspiring 
 Spirit. In this state he heard a Voice behind 
 him as if through a trumpet, telling him Who 
 was speaking to him. " What thou seest (said 
 the Voice), write in a book, and send it to the 
 seven churches " of (Proconsular) Asia — naming 
 them. On turning to see the Speaker, a scene 
 was spread out before him every detail of which 
 is here set down ; the effect produced upon 
 himself ; and what his once dead but now risen 
 and glorified Lord did and said to him, whose 
 preciousness to every Christian heart is inde- 
 scribable. 
 
 Under three heads his materials were to be 
 arranged. " Write the things which thou 
 sawest " — that is, this vision (i. i — 20); "and 
 the things which are" — the existing state of 
 the seven churches (ii., iii.) ; " and the things 
 which shall be hereafter " — the strictly prophetic 
 part of the book (iv. — xxii.). 
 
 As to the Epistles, the artistic structure of 
 them strikes every reader. (1) Each Epistle is 
 addressed by its glorified H ead under some one 
 of the symbols by which He is described in the 
 opening vision, selected with express reference 
 to the state of that particular church. (2) Each 
 
ITS STRUCTURE. 69 
 
 church is addressed through its "angel," or 
 presiding minister. Yet (3) what is said to 
 one church is expressly said to be meant for all ; 
 nay, to whoever has an ear to hear. (4) Each 
 Epistle, though Christ's letter to that church 
 and all the rest, is at the same time " what the 
 Spirit saith unto the churches"; for He " takes 
 of the things of Christ, and shews it unto us." 
 (5) Each Epistle — whether for praise or blame 
 — begins with the solemn words, " I know thy 
 works," to summon breathless attention to what 
 He whose "eyes are as a flame of fire " has to 
 say to that church ; and each Epistle closes with 
 2i promise, suited to what had been said of it ; 
 and this alike to those in the best state (as 
 Thyatira and Philadelphia), and in the zvorst 
 (as Laodicea). And, what is remarkable, (6) the 
 promise to the worst as well as to the best is 
 addressed " to him that overcometk,'' to assure 
 all alike that, though the Christian life in every 
 living church is a struggling life, it will prove 
 in the end a victorious life. 
 
 But it is not till we come to the strictly 
 prophetic part of this book that its artistic struc- 
 ture is seen to be, not only a feature of peculiar 
 
70 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 interest, but an indispensable key to the right 
 understanding of the march of events. For so 
 shifting and interpenetrating do its visions 
 seem to be to any but the closest and most 
 patient students, that one almost despairs (as 
 indeed most do) of finding his way through 
 its intricacies until the scheme of its structure 
 begins to open upon him. 
 
 The Choral Hymns, which throw so great 
 charm over this book, are designed, I believe, 
 for the same purpose as the Chorus in the 
 Tragedies of the Greek Theatre. 
 
 " The chorus (says K. O. Mtiller) represents 
 the ideal spectator, whose mode of viewing 
 things was to guide and control the impressions 
 of the assembled people. The chorus . . . 
 appears, in this kind of song, in its appropriate 
 character, namely, to express the sentiments of 
 a pious and well-ordered mind in beautiful and 
 noble forms." * 
 
 Even so here : the Choral Hymns are designed, 
 I believe it will be seen, to convey to the reader, 
 
 • History of the Lite?-ature of Greece, from the German of 
 K. O. Miiller. By Sir George Corn well Lewis. 2nd ed., 1847, 
 p. 311. See also Smitli's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman 
 Antiquities " : Art. Chorus. 
 
ITS STRUCTURE. 71 
 
 not only in "beautiful and noble forms," but in 
 celestial strains, a general impression of what 
 the symbolical visions are intended to teach. 
 
 The first of these hymns I call The grand 
 Inaugural Hymn, — not so much because it 
 extends through the first two chapters of the 
 strictly predictive part of the book, but because it 
 will be found to cover the whole ground of the 
 Prophecy — embracing all that Infinite Wisdom 
 saw it fit that the Church should know of its 
 future fortunes. And if so, it will follow that 
 all the successive Visions of this book are but 
 subdivisions of this one. 
 
 The following notes on the leading features 
 of this great hymn will make this clear. It 
 should be noted that in its style, prose phraseo- 
 logy is studiously set aside, to make way for the 
 stately significance of symbol. 
 
 The curtain rises majestically, disclosing a Throne, 
 with One sitting on it in dazzling brightness — the 
 living God, but exclusively in the character of 
 Creator. Round about this Throne are " four and 
 twenty thrones," with " elders " sitting on them, who, 
 as they tell us themselves (v. 9), are the redeemed 
 from among men, in two sections — those before Christ, 
 among " the twelve tribes of Israel " (xxi. 1 1), and those 
 after Christ, represented by "the twelve apostles of 
 
72 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the Lamb" (xxi. 14).* What right they have to sit on 
 thrones, and how they come to be " clothed in white 
 raiment," they tell us themselves, in the song we find 
 them singing at the outset of this book : " Unto Him 
 that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His 
 own blood, and hath made us unto our God kings^ 
 But they are " priests " as well ; and that is here too, 
 I think, though I gather this only from the function 
 assigned to them under the symbol of the " four hving 
 creatures." For, as will be observed, all the worship 
 celebrated in these two chapters is led by them : see 
 iv. 9, 10, and v. 14. 
 
 When we pass on to chap. v. the scene changes from 
 Creation to Redemption. In the right hand of Him 
 that sat on the throne was seen " a book, written within 
 and on the backside " (full of matter, even to overflow- 
 ing), " sealed with seven seals," each bearing its own 
 burden, but as yet a profound secret to all creation. 
 This is set forth with wonderful sublimity, by a 
 challenge thrown out by " a strong angel " to every 
 creature, but accepted by none, to open or even to look 
 upon this book; by the much weeping of the Seer 
 at the hopelessness, to all appearance, of its contents 
 ever being disclosed ; and then by the marvellous way 
 in which relief came to him. " Weep not," said " one 
 of the elders " — for they were the party most interested 
 in its contents : " behold, the Lion of the tribe of 
 Judah, the Root of David, hath conquered" (ivUrjo-ev) 
 
 * Compare xv. 3, " tlie song of Mos€s," and "the song of 
 the Lamb.''' 
 
ITS STRUCTURE. 73 
 
 the right " to open the book, and to loose the seals 
 thereof. And, lo, in the midst of the throne and of 
 the four living creatures, and in the midst of the Church 
 (as the central object), stood a Lamb, as though it had 
 been slain (in all the freshness of its sacrificial virtue), 
 having seven horns (omnipotence) and seven eyes 
 (omniscience), which are the seven Spirits of God (the 
 fulness of the Holy Ghost, in the hands of Christ, 
 John vii. 39 ; xvi. 13 — 15) sent forth into all the earth," 
 to conquer it for Him " whose right it is to reign." 
 
 Such v^as He who, In the conscious majesty 
 of His right, "came and took the book out of 
 the right hand of Him that sat upon the 
 Throne." Whereupon " the four Hving crea- 
 tures and the four-and-twenty elders (for it was 
 their future that was wrapt up in that book) 
 fell down before the Lamb, having each one 
 a harp and golden vials,* full of odours which 
 are the prayers f of the saints, saying, Worthy 
 art Thou to take the book, and to loose the 
 
 * There is no need, I think, to change the familiar word " vial " 
 here into bowl (as in the R.V.). For though the vessel meant is 
 more of a bowl shape, it is the contents (not the shape of the 
 vessel) that is of any consequence. 
 
 t The word " prayers " here is used for all the outpourings of 
 the heart to God, whether in prayer (strictly so called) or praise. 
 Here it is certainly praise. The same is true of the correspond- 
 ing Hebrew word in Ps. Ixxii. 20, where the whole psalm is one 
 of praise. 
 
74 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and didst 
 A«)\ purchase (^yopaa-a^yusjunto God by Thy blood, 
 out of every tribe and tongue and people and 
 nation, and madest us to be unto our God 
 kings and priests : * and we shall reign on the 
 earth.'\ 
 
 So much depends upon the sense in which 
 we understand the last words, that to mark 
 this I have printed them in italics. The ques- 
 tion is. Have we here the expectant attitude 
 of saints already in heaven, exulting in the 
 prospect of descending at some future time to 
 the earth, to reign on it ? Or, although the 
 scene is laid in heaven, have we a vision of the 
 Church militant here on earth, and (at the time 
 when this book was written) only struggling 
 into visible existence, against determined oppo- 
 sition, and joyously anticipating the time when 
 the kingdom and the dominion under the 
 
 * I retain here the received text and the A.V., believing that 
 the text followred in the R.V. is a corruption of the true text. 
 The words are taken from Exod. xix. 6, " Yc shall be unto Me 
 a kingdom of priests {or with the LXX. "a royal priesthood"). 
 If this be studied along with Rev. i. 6, and v. lo (as given in the 
 R.V.), it will be seen, I think, how the corruption arose. 
 
 t As to the future tense — " we shall reign " — 1 am persuaded 
 that even the authorities that read the present tense, " we reign," 
 meant it in a future sense. 
 
ITS STRUCTURE. 75 
 
 whole heaven would be given to " the people of 
 the Most High " — and then issuing in glory ? 
 
 To me this last view gives the true concep- 
 tion of this song, and of the Inaugural Hymn 
 itself, which forms the burden of the seven 
 sealed books. 
 
 Before passing away from this Vision, the reader 
 should note the part assigned in it to the angels, who, 
 though they have no share (and need none) in the work 
 of redemption, yet " desire to look unto these things " 
 (i Peter i. ii), in which they behold "the manifold 
 wisdom of God " (Eph, iii. 10), and a love otherwise 
 inconceivable. They stand in this vision, as is fitting, 
 outside the circle of the living creatures and the elders 
 (v. 11); and as they behold the ransomed host falling 
 prostrate before the Lamb that was slain for them, 
 they pay along with them their own tribute of adoration. 
 And if there is joy in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth, how much more when all arrive at their 
 final home, to be their companions for ever ! The 
 whole scene closes with the Amen of the redeemed. 
 
 Come we now to the more formidable part of our 
 task — to see whether, on the basis of the internal 
 structure of the book itself, once solidly laid, it may 
 not be possible to find, in outline, the fortunes of the 
 Church historically predicted. And surely, if this '* book 
 of the revelations of Jesus Christ " was given for the 
 express purpose of " shewing unto His servants the 
 
76 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 things which were shortly to come to pass," such an 
 attempt ought not to be deemed either presumptuous 
 or hopeless. 
 
 The first writer who threw any light upon this book 
 to me was the learned Joseph Mede (1586 — 1638).* 
 * Keys ' to the Apocalypse that open nothing we have 
 in abundance — plunging into the interpretation of the 
 book without first settling the limits within which alone 
 interpretation can legitimately be looked for. But Joseph 
 Mede, by his Clavis Apocalyptica^\ at once set me upon 
 my feet. Here I found a starting-point, proceeding 
 from which it seemed to me possible, if not to reach, 
 yet to approach the goal. 
 
 " The Apocalypse (says Mede) hath marks and signs 
 sufficient, inserted by the Holy Spirit, whereby the Order, 
 Synchronisms and Symbols of all the Visions may be 
 found out and demonstrated, without supposal of any 
 interpretation whatsoever. The order and synchronisms, 
 thus found out and demonstrated, as it were, by argu- 
 menta intrinseca, is the first thing to be done, and forelaid 
 as a foundation, ground, and only safe ride of interpreta- 
 tion. If the order be first fixed and settled, out of the 
 indubitable character of the letter of the text, and after- 
 wards interpretation guided, framed, and directed by that 
 order, then will the variety of interpretations be drawn 
 into very narrow compass. This is the method which I 
 
 * " The Works of the Pious and Profoundly Learned Joseph 
 Mede, B.D., sometime Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge." 
 (Lond., folio, 1677). 
 
 t Clavis Apocalyptica ex innatis ct insitis Vist07tem charac- 
 teribus ericia et detnotisirata. 
 
ITS STRUCTURE. yy 
 
 endeavoured to represent in my Scheme \_his Clavis], and 
 demonstrate in the Tractate annexed* in which therefore 
 yotc shall find all interpretations set apart, and, as it 
 were, discharged, and all the reasons [/ assign~\ to be 
 founded upon the bare letter of the text ; taking no notice 
 at all of any event or interpretation whatsoever, but 
 leaving all at liberty ; only reserved that the order and 
 synchronism which I represent out of the text be no 
 ways violated thereby: and so let the interpretation be 
 whatsoever it may be." t 
 
 Here, surely, is common sense ; and Mede, 
 in his Clavis, working on this principle, pro- 
 ceeds to lay down a series of Synchronisms (or 
 contemporaneous predictions), which may be 
 proved from the text itself to be so. In this 
 way, shutting himself in every case within in 
 the conditions of the question, he refuses to look 
 at any interpretation lying outside of these 
 conditions. Thus limited, he gives us his own 
 interpretation of the events predicted, — in which 
 he admits he may be wrong ; but leaving every 
 one to judge for himself provided only that he 
 keeps within the limits prescribed by the text 
 itself. 
 
 * In S. Joatmis Apocalypsiu Cot/uiientariiis, ad amussini Clavis 
 ApocalypticGK. 
 t " Select Remains," p. 581. 
 
78 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Following, at a humble distance, this master 
 of Apocalyptic interpretation, I now proceed 
 to the task I have undertaken, beginning, of 
 course, with — 
 
 THE SEVEN SEALS. 
 
 These, as I have said, cover the whole 
 ground of prophetic disclosure in this book. 
 From which it follows that the two Septenaries 
 that come next in order (the Trumpet series 
 and the Vial series) are but subdivisions of 
 this all-comprehensive one. 
 
 But, besides these, there is a distinct set 
 of Visions — not arranged in Septenaries, and 
 having a symbolism of their own. These will 
 be found to be of an Explanatory nature — 
 designed to fill up in detail what in the 
 Septenaries is presented only in dim outline. 
 These Explanatory Visions extend from chap. x. 
 to xiv. inclusive, after which the Septenary 
 form is resumed in chap. xv. and xvi. 
 
 So indispensable are these Explanatory- 
 Visions to the right apprehension of the 
 march of events, that, alongside of all I have 
 to say on the Seals, it will be necessary to 
 take in more or less of the Explanatory matter. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 79 
 
 One other device of this book may be noted 
 here. When any of the great epochal events 
 is to occur, it is first announced in a burst of ^ 
 song, or similar form, the details of all that lead 
 up to it being reserved for subsequent disclosures. 
 
 We may now proceed to the predictions of 
 this book in order. 
 
 THE FIRST SEAL. 
 
 Happily, interpreters are pretty well agreed 
 about the general import of the symbolism here 
 employed. The rider on the white horse, with 
 a bow in his hand and a crown (of victory — 
 (ni^avoi) on his head, " going forth conquering 
 and to conquer," is Christ in the Gospel, going 
 forth to conquer, not Judaism, which (as we 
 shall presendy see) had already fallen, but the 
 Paganism of the Roman Empire. 
 
 Passing the next three Seals (for I am not 
 writing a commentary, but an A B C), let us 
 see what we can get out of 
 
 THE FIFTH SEAL. 
 
 " And when He had opened the fifth seal 
 I saw under the altar (of sacrifice) the souls of 
 them that had been slain for the word of God, 
 
8o THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 and for the testimony which they held ; and 
 they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, 
 O Master,* the holy and true, dost Thou not 
 judge, and avenge our blood on them that 
 dwell on the earth?" (vi. 9, 10). 
 
 This, surely, is not the cry of the few 
 martyrs to the fury of a fanatical Judaism 
 before the fall of Jerusalem. To me it speaks 
 of a persecution so protracted and so bloody as 
 to extort from the slain witnesses of Christ a 
 cry of astonishment that no sign of deliverance 
 was appearing. I hear in it the cry of whole 
 centuries of Pagan persecution, well-nigh ex- 
 hausting the patience and faith of the saints. 
 But the answer to the cry is even more signi- 
 ficant of this: "And there was given them to 
 each one a white robe ; and it was said to 
 them, that they should rest yet a little time 
 until their fellow-servants and their brethren, 
 that should be killed as they were, should be 
 fulfilled" (vi. 11). 
 
 Yes, dear souls, the voice of your blood, like 
 
 ' * Aea-rroTTjs — "master," or " proprietor," — of slaves as his pur- 
 chased property. As such, it is used of Christ, whose purchased 
 property His people are (i Cor. vi. 20; 2 Peter ii. i); and here 
 as the Avenger of their wrongs (compare Rom. xii. 19). 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 8i 
 
 Abel's, has cried to your Master from the 
 ground, and it shall be avenged, though not 
 yet ; for another cycle of bloody persecution 
 has to follow yours, and then will come the 
 time of vengeance for both ! 
 
 If historical prediction is to be found in 
 this book at all, surely it is here. Church 
 history tells at least this stern reality, — that in 
 succession to the centuries of Pagan, there 
 followed a period of Papal persecution, more 
 than thrice the length of the former. 
 
 THE SIXTH SEAL. 
 
 •' And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, 
 and there was a great earthquake ; and the 
 sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the 
 whole moon became as blood ; and the stars 
 of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree 
 casteth her unripe figs, when she is shaken of a 
 great wind. And the heaven was removed as a 
 scroll when it is rolled up ; and every mountain 
 and island were moved out of their places. 
 And the kings of the earth, and the princes, 
 and the chief captains, and the rich.Tand the 
 strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid 
 
 6 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 themselves in the caves and in the rocks of 
 the mountains ; and they say to the mountains 
 and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from 
 the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and 
 from the zvrath of the La77th : for the great day 
 of their * W7^ath is come ; and who is able to 
 stand?'' (vi. 12 — 17). 
 
 The Old Testament has made us familiar 
 with the symbolism here employed, to express 
 a great revolution (Isa. xiii. 6 — 10, 13, 14, etc.) ; 
 while the closing words, which I have italicised, 
 tell with awful significance the nature and cause 
 of the change. While the great red dragon 
 was inspiring his Imperial agents to make the 
 blood of the martyrs for centuries to flow like 
 water, little knew they that they were kindling 
 ** the wrath of the Lamb^' — strange word ! But 
 they were at length made to feel it in their 
 expulsion, one and all of them, from place 
 and power in the Empire, and to see the hated 
 thing in the throne of the Caesars. 
 
 Turn we now to the Explanatory chapter — 
 xii. — which tells the same tale in a symbolism 
 of its own. 
 
 This is evidently the true reading here. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 83 
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON. 
 
 " And a great sign was seen in heaven ; a 
 woman arrayed with the sun, and the moon 
 under her feet, and upon her head a crown of 
 twelve stars ; and she was with child : and she 
 cried out, travailing in birth, and in pain to be 
 delivered" (xii. i, 2). The symbolism here is 
 easy and beautiful: it is the Church, "the 
 bride, the Lamb's wife," in all the freshness 
 and vigour of youth, about to give birth to 
 a progeny of Christians, that are to rule all 
 nations, and fill the earth. 
 
 But there was seen another sign in heaven, — 
 " a great red dragon, having seven heads and 
 ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems " 
 (8ta8')7/xaTa — royal crowns *). This is the 
 Roman Empire, in its unbroken supremacy, 
 with its seven forms of government — that of 
 Emperor being the existing one when this book 
 was written. But, whereas it is the " great red 
 dragon " that has the heads and the horns, this 
 is to signify that the Empire is to be seen 
 inspired by " that old serpent, the devil," to 
 
 * Not crrecpavovs, crowns of victory (as in vi. 2). 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 believe that Christianity was a religion hostile 
 to the Empire and not to be tolerated ; and so 
 he is "red" with the blood of the Christians. 
 Accordingly, edict after edict was issued, order- 
 ing every known Christian to be put to death. 
 The effect of this may be imagined. Many 
 fell away, "denying the Lord that bought 
 them " ; and as the shepherds of the flock would 
 be the first to be seized on, traitors to Christ 
 would be found among them ; and the dragon 
 calculated on this, — for " his tail drew the third 
 part of the stars of heaven (the ministers of 
 the Church, i. 20), and did cast them to the 
 earth " — or stealthily got them to betray their 
 trust. But there was a noble army of martyrs, 
 who counted not their lives dear unto them, 
 but laid them down for Him that died for them. 
 When Pliny the Younger was Propraetor of 
 Pontus and Bithynia, on the north-eastern shore 
 of the Black Sea (about a.d. iio), he found that 
 Christianity had made such progress there that 
 it had almost emptied the temples, and that at 
 the shambles buyers of meat which had been 
 offered to idols could hardly be got. What, 
 then, was this kind-hearted man to do when 
 an edict was issued by Trajan, well-meaning 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 85 
 
 Emperor though he was, to put all Christians 
 to death ? Crowds were brought before him, 
 charged with being Christians. What answer 
 got he ? We zvere Christians, but we gave it 
 up long since, said some ; five years ago, said 
 one, others ten, some fifteen, and some even 
 twenty years ago. Among the tests he put 
 them through — such as offering incense to 
 the gods and the Emperor's own image — 
 there was one which never failed to show who 
 were and were not Christians : making them 
 ''curse Christy That, it was said, no real 
 Christian could be got to do.* 
 
 *' And the dragon stood before the woman 
 when she was about to be delivered, that when 
 she was delivered he might devour her child," 
 — the woman's progeny, the fresh converts 
 to Christ. And when one bloody persecution 
 succeeded another, with its crop of martyrs, 
 he would seem to be doing it. But a sleepless 
 Eye was over it, and " the child was caught 
 up unto God, and unto His throne. And 
 the woman fled into the wilderness, where 
 
 * See his Letter to Trajan, asking for instructions how to 
 proceed, with Trajan's Answer, happily preserved amo^g his 
 Epistles, Nos. xcvii., xcviii. (ed. Keil, 1853). 
 
86 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 she hath a place prepared of God, that they 
 should feed her there a thousand two hun- 
 dred and threescore (prophetic) days," or 1260 
 years.* 
 
 At first one is at a loss to see the connexion 
 between the two things here announced — the 
 ascent of " the child " to the throne, and the 
 flight of " the woman" into the wilderness for 
 so protracted a period. But the scene that 
 follows — which is actually the same events as 
 are here announced, but spread out in fuller 
 detail, and under another symbolism — will clear 
 the matter up. 
 
 THE WAR IN HEAVEN BETWEEN MICHAEL AND 
 THE DRAGON. 
 
 " And there was war in heaven : Michael 
 and his angels (see Eph. iii. 10) going forth to 
 war with the dragon and his angels (see Eph. 
 vi. 12) ; and the dragon warred, and his angels, 
 
 * I say " prophetic " days ; for I cannot stop to discuss here 
 tlie tiieory of literal as against proplietic days. One tiling is 
 obvious, that it is the same period as is elsewhere called " forty 
 and two months" (xi. 2), and "a time, and times, and half a 
 time " (xii. 14) ; and it will be hard to show how tiie things 
 predicted of tliis period could take place within three literal years 
 and a half. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 87 
 
 and they prevailed not, neither was their place 
 found any more in heaven " (xii. 7, 8). In the 
 deepest sense, the war was in " the heavenly 
 places," — the unseen regions ; in other words, 
 between the spiritual powers of good and evil, 
 or Christ and the great enemy of souls. But, 
 as a matter of fact, it was fought down here, 
 in human flesh and blood, as the martyrs to 
 dragon-inspired Paganism knew to their cost. 
 But the result was glorious, and is told in 
 these thrilling words : " And they overcame 
 him (the dragon) by* the blood of the Lamb, 
 and by the word of their testimony ; and 
 they loved not their lives even unto death " 
 (xii. 11). 
 
 " And the great dragon was cast out, the old 
 serpent, called the devil and Satan, the deceiver 
 of the whole world ; he was cast out, and his 
 angels were cast down with him" (xii. 9). In 
 other words : By the accession at length of a 
 Christian to the throne of the Empire, Paganism 
 was overthrown. All the diabolical influence 
 
 * I retain here the A.V. ; for, though the preposition {bia with 
 ace.) properly means "by reason of" rather than "by" or 
 " through," the senses (as IVincr says) are apt to run into each 
 other, — as here, I think. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 with which the dragon inspired his Pagan 
 agents immediately ceased. No wonder that 
 all heaven rang with joy, saying, " Now is come 
 salvation, and the kingdom of our God, and 
 the authority of His Christ : for the accuser of 
 our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them 
 before otir God day and night."* 
 
 This closes the first period of predicted 
 Church history, in symbol, — the seating of 
 Christianity on the throne of the Ceesars in the 
 fourth century. But the dragon's resources are 
 far from being exhausted. Since the Christians 
 have got the better of him, he will become a 
 Christian himself, to betray Christ with a kiss ! 
 Was there a Judas among the Twelve, a " son 
 of perdition" (John xvii. 12), who "did eat of 
 Christ's bread, but lifted up his heel against 
 Him " (Ps. xli. 9 ; John xiii. 18) ? The dragon 
 
 * In the words which I have itaUcised the reader should note 
 the ghmpse which they give of what passes in the unseen regions 
 of the spiritual powers of good and evil — " the heavenly places " 
 — one of many too often overlooked or explained away. The 
 second chapter of Job gives one example of what is here said to be 
 going on incessantly. Usually this is viewed as but a dramatic 
 representation of the struggle that goes on in the human breast 
 between good and evil. But, in the light of the words I have 
 italicised, perhaps it will be seen to be a stern reality. See 
 Zech. iii. i — 6, and Jude 9. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 
 
 will know how to work even Christianity into 
 an engine of his own against Christ Himself, 
 and will create a " son of perdition " in the 
 heart of the Church ! (2 Thess. ii. 3.) 
 
 On the accession of Constantine, persecution 
 of course ceased. And just as when Saul of 
 Tarsus, from being a bloody persecutor, became 
 a preacher of the faith which once he destroyed, 
 one might have said, after this triumph of the 
 Gospel : "Then had the churches peace ; and, 
 walking in the fear of the Lord and in the com- 
 fort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." Yes, 
 multiplied they were : for the persecuted soon 
 became the popular cause. Numbers flocked 
 into the Church ; but the quality was not as 
 the quantity, for living Christianity rapidly 
 declined. The Emperor naturally paid court 
 to the bishops, and this proved too much for 
 them. Clerical ambition set in, and new ecclesi- 
 astical orders were invented to correspond with 
 the grades of office in the State — from bishops 
 to archbishops, metropolitans, patriarchs, pri- 
 mates ; and what that would culminate in 
 no one needs to be told. To be Bishop of 
 Rome in persecuting times was vv^hat no one 
 would covet who was not prepared to be 
 
90 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the first victim : but now it was the most 
 coveted of all posts, at the seat of power, and 
 ensuring the ear of the Emperor. How the 
 gradual weakening of the Eastern Empire 
 tended naturally to strengthen the West, and 
 how its clergy were not slow to improve their 
 advantage, until at length it issued in a full- 
 blown Papacy at Rome, I leave Church history 
 to tell. 
 
 We are now to see what is the dragon's new 
 policy. It is twofold. In the same verse that 
 calls upon the heavens to rejoice because of 
 the triumph of Christianity over Paganism, we 
 have a "woe for the earth and for the sea' ; 
 for there, it seems, we shall find "the devil" 
 at work : — " Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and 
 ye that dwell in them. Woe for the earth 
 and for the sea : because the devil is gone 
 down unto you, having great wrath, knozuing 
 that he hath but a short ttjne " * (xii. 1 2). 
 
 * Here is another of those glimpses into the Unseen which 
 should not be overlooked. The great enemy of Christ has been 
 made to know, it seems, tlic limit of his reign. (Compare Matt. 
 viii. 29 : " What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of 
 God V art Thou come to destroy us before the time ? ') And 
 this shows, too, that they know their Judge to be Jesus, the Son 
 of God, and the " Seed of the woman." 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 91 
 
 ["And when the dragon saw that he was 
 cast down to the earth, he persecuted the 
 woman which brought forth the man child. 
 And there were given to the woman the two 
 wings of the great eagle, that she might fly 
 into the wilderness unto her place, where she 
 is nourished for a (prophetic) time, and times, 
 and half a time (=1260 years), from the face of 
 the serpent" (xii. 13, 14).] 
 
 I have bracketed these two verses, as they 
 are evidently parenthetical, referring the reader 
 back to verse 6. But before going further we 
 must go back to chap, vii., where we shall find 
 — not the opening of the Seventh Seal, which 
 we should expect, after the fall of Paganism 
 (vi, 12 — 17), but great preparations for the 
 opening of it ; ushering us, in fact, into the 
 events of the 1260 years. 
 
 PREPARATIONS FOR THE OPENING OF 
 THE SEVENTH SEAL. 
 
 Cpiap. vii. 
 
 After reading the disclosures of the Sixth 
 Seal (vi. 12 — 17), we expect to read: "And 
 when He had opened the Seventh Seal, I 
 
92 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 saw " — such and such things. But, instead of 
 this, four angels are seen holding the four 
 winds of the earth, to keep them from bursting 
 forth in a desolating storm, which, but for this, 
 might destroy indiscriminately the righteous 
 with the wicked. To prevent this an angel 
 is seen "having the seal of the living God," 
 to " seal the servants of our God on their 
 foreheads " — as " living epistles of Christ, 
 known and read of all men " (2 Cor. iii. 3). 
 
 The number of the sealed is then symboli- 
 cally expressed by the square of 12 = 144,000 ; 
 for " the Lord knoweth them that are His " 
 (2 Tim. ii. 19). They are of every tribe of the 
 children of Israel. 
 
 I should have thought it unnecessary to prove 
 that literal Israelites are not meant here. But 
 as the whole sense of the prophecy depends 
 on it, and even good interpreters go far astray 
 here, I will now prove it. (i) The tribal 
 division is quite different from that of the 
 natural Israel. (2) Of unconverted Israelites 
 it could not be said that they were " the 
 servants of our God," and of converted ones 
 there is no conceivable reason why they should 
 be singled out from among all other Christians 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 93 
 
 for preservation. But above all, (3) when we 
 turn to chap. xiv. — where we find the same 
 company of 144,000 "sealed" ones — not only 
 are they not called Israelites at all, but they are 
 described by such marked features of character 
 as make it evident that they are Christ's 
 faithful witnesses hi a period of almost uni- 
 versal degeneracy and persecution tmto death. 
 First, they "stood with the Lamb* on the 
 mount Zion " (where the true Israel worship), 
 xiv. I ; and they " had their Father's name 
 written on their foreheads," as in vii. 5. Next, 
 they were virgin souls, uncontaminated by 
 the reigning defection, "following the Lamb 
 whithersoever He goeth " (xiv. 4) ; "in their 
 mouth was found no lie,t and they were 
 without blemish " (xiv. 5). Again, as such, 
 they were not suffered to live : for they were 
 " purchased {r]yopa(T^ivoi) from the earth " 
 (xiv. 1,) ; or (as in verse 4) " were purchased 
 (r)yopaadr)(Tav) from among men, being the first- 
 fruits unto God and the Lamb," Once 772ore, 
 they had a song to sing, which none knew but 
 
 * Not " a lamb " — according to the A.V. and a heading of the 
 text, which has next to no support. 
 
 t Not " guile " — on next to no evidence. 
 
94 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 themselves ; being a class of martyrs by them- 
 selves — martyrs not for Christianity against 
 Paganism, but for Christ against Antichrist : 
 in other words, they were that second class of 
 martyrs which the first class were expressly 
 told they must wait for, ere their own blood 
 could be "avenged." They must "wait yet 
 for a little time, until their fellow-servants and 
 their brethren, that should be killed as they 
 were, should be fulfilled" (vi. ii). 
 
 Well, now. that they also are killed, what 
 follows ? Turn back to the " sealing " of the 
 144,000 in chap, vii., and immediately after 
 that we read : " After these things I saw, and 
 behold, a great multitude, which no man could 
 number, out of every tribe, and people, and 
 tongue, and nation, standing before the throne 
 and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, 
 and palms in their hands ; and shouting. Salva- 
 tion to Him that sitteth on the throne, and to 
 the Lamb " — and all that follows to the end of 
 that chapter. // is this noble army of martyrs, 
 of both classes, that is specially in view. The 
 language, it is true, is so catholic, that when 
 read, with no reference to the place and the 
 connexion in which it stands, it reads simply as 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 95 
 
 a matchless description of the heavenly state, 
 with no reference to one class more than 
 another. As such it is read and will be read 
 as long as there are those who have friends 
 already there, or are themselves on their way 
 thither. But, all the same, one has only, after 
 reading the preceding part of chap. vii. up to 
 verse 8, and then what follows, to observe 
 the emphasis in verse 14 — "These are they 
 which come out of the great tribulation, and 
 they washed their robes, and made them white 
 in the blood pf the Lamb " — and they will come, 
 I believe, to see that one class of the glorified 
 is specially in view, namely, the 144,000 
 " sealed " ones, described in chap, xiv., as 
 " redeemed from the earth." The language, 
 as I said, is too catholic to be restricted to any 
 one class of saints ; but this is a characteristic 
 of Scripture language. — that what is specially 
 meant for one class is so expressed as to admit 
 of being extended in principle to all of the 
 same class.* 
 
 * Take, for example, the very chapter just commented on 
 (xiv. 13): " I heard a Voice from heaven, saying, Write, Blessed 
 are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith 
 the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ; for their works 
 follow with them." Read simply as expressing the blessedness of 
 
96 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Preparation being thus made for the pro- 
 tection of the " sealed " against the desolating 
 storm, whose approach is announced in vii. i, 
 the opening of the Seventh Seal is at length 
 announced. 
 
 THE SEVENTH SEAL. 
 
 Chap, viii,, ix. 
 
 But, instead of the usual words " And when 
 he had opened the Seventh Seal," its contents 
 were such and such, we read, " there followed 
 a silence in heaven about the space of half an 
 hour," — in other words, there ensued a brief 
 pause before the curtain rose, so to speak, for 
 a new series of disclosures. These, we find, 
 are seven in number, or seven great events 
 announced by the sounding of Seven Trumpets, 
 in the hands of Seven Angels. 
 
 THE SEVEN TRUMPETS. 
 
 It is no part of the plan of this A B C to 
 take up these in detail. I hasten, instead, to 
 
 all who " sleep in Jesus," this has been the tlieme of funeral 
 sermons ; and most suitably. But read in coiincxio7i with the 
 context, both before and after, it will be seen to refer specially to 
 that class which is the burden of tlie whole chapter. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 97 
 
 what will open up the whole subject of the 
 Prophecy, in a form and with a detail not to 
 be had in the Septenaries. I refer to the 
 Explanatory Visions, the character of which 
 I have already explained (see p. y'^). These 
 Visions begin with chap, x., and extend through 
 several successive chapters. 
 
 Chap. X. opens with *' a mighty angel " seen 
 coming down from heaven, with characteristics 
 which seem to identify him with Him whom 
 the Seer first beheld, in the vision of chap. i. 
 He bestrode " the earth and the sea," to signify 
 his purpose to take possession of them as His 
 own. He "had in his hand a Little Book open' 
 — for its contents had already been disclosed, 
 but not yet sufficiently explained. So he cries 
 with a lion-roar. Whereupon " seven thunders 
 uttered their voices." And they were articulate 
 voices, for the Seer was about to write what 
 they uttered. But this he was forbidden to do — 
 not because their contents were not to be dis- 
 closed at all, but because the time for it would 
 not be until the iniquities of the antichristian 
 Power were full. " But in the days of the 
 voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to 
 sound " (his trumpet), it would then be seen that 
 
 7 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the "seven thunders" were the Seven Vials 
 of the wrath of God upon the antichristian 
 Power. Nor was this to be long delayed. 
 For the angel that talked with the Seer 
 is heard swearing by Him that liveth for 
 "ever and ever that " there should be time no 
 longer'' given for delay, than till "the days of 
 the voice of the seventh angel, when he is 
 about to sound, the mystery of God should 
 (then) be finished, according to the glad 
 tidings which He declared to His servants 
 the prophets." 
 
 The Seer is now told to go and take the 
 Little Book out of the angel's hand ; which 
 having done, he is told to " eat it up," and he 
 would find it " bitter in his belly " (its contents, 
 when digested, would be found very doleful), 
 but " in his mouth sweet as honey " (as all God's 
 words are to His own) : compare Ps. xix. lo ; 
 Jer. XV. II. This he did, and found even as 
 said to him ; and the meaning of the act is 
 made plain to him as follows : " Thou must 
 prophesy again " — or utter a fresh series of pre- 
 dictions—" over (or concerning) many peoples, 
 and nations, and tongues, and kings " ; in other 
 words, concerning the States of Christendom. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 99 
 
 But, since the Little Book was open, these 
 new predictions could be nothing more than 
 a fuller or more expanded representation of 
 what had been summarily announced before 
 — in the Explanatory Visions. The first one, 
 in chap, xi., I reserve until the second one — 
 xii. 13, 14, which covers more ground — has 
 been opened up. 
 
 THE DRAGON'S NEW POLICY. 
 
 Chap. xii. 13, 14 (see p. 90). 
 
 " And when the dragon saw that he was cast 
 down to the earth, he persecuted the woman 
 which brought forth the man child. And there 
 were given to the woman the two wings 
 of the great eagle, that she might fly into 
 the wilderness unto her place, where she is 
 nourished for a (prophetic) time, and times, 
 and half a time" (1260 years). 
 
 " The dragon," it will be remembered, has 
 " the seven heads and ten horns," working 
 through the Imperial Power of Rome, under 
 which Christianity was born. But now that 
 Christianity is on the throne, in the person of a 
 
loo THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Christian Emperor, he will direct his attacks , 
 upon two quarters — the earth and the sea ; for 
 each a "woe" of pity is pronopnced, for the 
 evils that would come upon the quarters thus 
 marked out. 
 
 "WOE FOR THE EARTH." 
 
 Chap. xii. 12. 
 
 " And the serpent cast out of his mouth after 
 the woman water as a river, that he might cause 
 her to be carried away by the stream. And the 
 earth helped the woman, and the earth opened 
 her mouth, and swallowed up the river which 
 the serpent cast out of his mouth" (xii. 15, 16). 
 
 What I have to say on these verses may be passed 
 over in the meantime ; for though, as I understand it, it 
 is a necessary link in the chain of events, I am anxious 
 to hasten on to the " woe for the sea" which will be 
 found to be the burden of the whole sequel of this 
 Prophecy, up to chap. xx. 
 
 Mede and other interpreters go astray here, as I 
 judge. It is true that water, as a cleansing element, 
 is a symbol in Scripture of divine truth (Ps. xlvi. 4 ; 
 Isa. xii. 3). And as water from the serpent's mouth must 
 needs be deadly, they see here a prediction of the deadly 
 Avian heresy, which at one time threatened to strip 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 
 
 , the Faith of all that is vital in it, but which in the end 
 fell more signally than it rose into favour; while the 
 orthodox faith acquired even more than its former 
 supremacy both in the councils of the Church and the 
 support of the throne : the earth thus swallowing up 
 the flood which the serpent cast out of his mouth 
 after the woman. But there are two fatal objections 
 to this, (i) The "earth" in this chapter is neither 
 the Church nor the Christian state. (2) The "water' 
 here referred to is explained in xvii. 15 to mean 
 peoples or nations. Now, the " peoples " here referred to 
 (as we shall see later on) are those who at a later stage, 
 when Christianised, are found supporting the " harlot." 
 At this stage they were outside of Christianity. 
 
 As I take it, they were those fierce northern races 
 who gradually migrated southward and westward from 
 the sterile region of Tartary, till, lying along the rich 
 northern provinces of the empire, they by little and 
 little fought their way into the heart of the empire, 
 and at length broke it up. But the victors had 
 intelligence as well as bravery, and embraced both the 
 civilisation and the religion of the vanquished ; and the 
 fragments of the broken empire became consolidated 
 into distinct and independent Christian sovereignties — 
 thus preparing the way for a supremacy over them all 
 even more real than that of the Caesars, but entirely 
 different. Thus did " the earth help the woman, 
 swallowing up the flood by which the serpent thought 
 to carry her away," — pouring heathen races into the 
 empire, hoping thereby to heathenise it. But again 
 did Christianity supplant Paganism — yet here, too, 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 as we shall see, only to be made a still deadlier enemy 
 of Christ. 
 
 "WOE FOR THE SEA." 
 
 " And he * stood upon the sand of the sea ; 
 and I saw a (wild) beast {drjp'iov) come up out 
 of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, f 
 and on his horns ten diadems (royal crowns), J 
 and on his heads names of blasphemy. And 
 the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and 
 his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his 
 mouth was as the mouth of a lion ; and the 
 dragon gave him his power and his throne, 
 and great authority. And I saw one of his 
 heads as though it had been smitten to death 
 (Greek "slain"); and his death-stroke was 
 healed : and the whole earth wondered after 
 the beast. And they worshipped the dragon, 
 because he gave his authority unto the beast. 
 And they worshipped the beast, saying. Who 
 
 * He, the dragon, stood — not the Seer, according to the 
 received text and the A.V. By this mistaken reading the 
 reader fails to see why, in order to bring up this terrible beast, 
 the dragon had to go to the sea for him, and is here found 
 standing by it. 
 
 t This significant change in the order of the words is un- 
 doubtedly the genuine text. 
 
 X See on chap. xii. 3, p. 83. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 103 
 
 is like unto the beast ? and who is able to 
 make war with him ? And there was given to 
 him a mouth speaking great things and blas- 
 phemies ; and there was given to him authority 
 to continue forty and two months. And he 
 opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, 
 to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, 
 and them that dwell in heaven. And it was 
 given to him to make war with the saints, and 
 to overcome them. And there was given to 
 him authority over every tribe, and people, and 
 tongue, and nation. And all that dwell on the 
 earth shall worship him, whose names have 
 not been written from the foundation of the 
 world in the book of life of the Lamb that 
 hath been slain" (xiii. i — 9).* 
 
 In these nine verses the new power called 
 " the (wild) beast " is described with a precision 
 as well as fulness of detail, as if to prevent 
 mistake either as to its nature or its seat. It 
 will not do, therefore, to generalise it away 
 by calling it simply the great world-power, ^ 
 
 * That this arrangement of the words gives the true sense of 
 the clause will be seen by comparing it with xvii. 8, where the 
 thing which took place "from the foundation of the world" is 
 not the death of the Lamb (for that is not mentioned at all), but 
 the writing of the names. 
 
I04 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 which in every age is found antagonistic to 
 the kingdom of God. It is contrary to all 
 the principles of strict interpretation to dis- 
 pose of details so specific, so varied, and so 
 peculiar, in this way. Let us try, then, how 
 far by strict exegesis we can approach the 
 solution of this great question. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POWER CALLED THE 
 '< BEAST." 
 
 1. Whereas it is said to come up "out of 
 the sea," this is to direct the reader back to 
 
 ^Daniel's Vision of the "four beasts" (Dan, vii.). 
 There the four winds of the heavens are 
 seen breaking forth upon the great sea, and 
 out of this convulsion " four great beasts come 
 from the sea." These are the four great 
 universal empires which had their origin in 
 political convulsions ; and of these the fourth 
 one is the beast of Rev. xiii. 
 
 2. Whereas in xii. 3 the dragon with seven 
 heads and ten horns has the diadems on the 
 heads, but now the same beast has the diadems 
 on the horns, this is to signify that the Roman 
 Empire had, by the time there referred to, 
 been broken up, and that its fragments had 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 105 
 
 become so many distinct and independent sove- 
 reignties. 
 
 3. Though independent of each other, these 
 States all owned subjection to a common head, 
 
 . here called the beast, whose horns they were. 
 
 4. If the empire had fallen ere the diadems 
 were found upon the horns, it follows that 
 the beast of Rev. xiii. cannot be any of the 
 emperors. 
 
 But of all the emperors that have been 
 fixed upon as " the beast of the Apocalypse," 
 the one who just now is the favourite with 
 distinguished critics has the least, I think, to 
 recommend it — the Emperor Nero. The 
 critics I refer to, recognising in this book 
 nothing strictly predictive, and seeing in it 
 only the passing events of the writer's own 
 time, seize upon a story then current, that 
 Nero, instead of having killed himself — which 
 he was known to have done — was only hiding 
 himself in the East, and would return to reign 
 again. This, they are confident, is the true 
 explanation of the death-stroke which one of 
 the heads of the beast received, but which was 
 healed (xiii. 3). It is also the solution of the 
 riddle, in xvii. 11, about "the beast that was 
 
io6 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 and is not, and is himself an eighth, and is of 
 the seven." "In fact" (says Professor Harnack) 
 "this book, long thought to be the most obscure 
 and difficult document of early Christianity, . . . 
 is neither obscure nor mysterious. . . . With- • 
 out being paradoxical, we may affirm that the 
 Apocalypse is the most intelligible book in the 
 New Testament ; because its author had not 
 the individuality and originality of Paul or 
 the author of the fourth Gospel." Indeed 
 (adds Harnack) fifty years ago, certain scholars 
 (whom he names) simultaneously discovered 
 " the number of the beast — 666 " (Rev. xiii. i8), 
 in the numerical value of the Hebrew letters 
 pni ^03 {CcBsar Neron, Emperor Nero).* No 
 doubt of it ; but he might with as much 
 truth — and as little pertinence — have told his 
 readers that, besides Irenccus (end of second 
 century), whose conjecture as to the number of 
 the beast is as respectable as any, others from 
 time to time have — by a like manipulation of 
 Hebrew or Greek words — found in other words 
 the number of the beast. I myself possess 
 an old edition of Irenseus ("Adv. Ha;r."), with 
 
 Encycl. Brit., 9th ed. : Ait. "Revelations." 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 107 
 
 copious foot-notes by the editor [Fettarden- 
 tius), in one of which that pious Jesuit finds 
 the number of the beast in Luther — as he 
 spells the word ! One might protest against 
 the arbitrariness of searching for the number 
 666 in the numerical value of Hebrew letters 
 in a book written in Greek. Also, since Nero 
 did not return, and, consequently, the deadly 
 wound was not healed, do they mean to tell 
 us that the writer of the Apocalypse was a 
 false prophet ? But such questions would not 
 trouble the critics of this school ; for thev can 
 sit loose to such niceties. 
 
 I have spent more time on this speculation 
 than it deserves. But if it teaches this lesson, 
 that mere scholarship — especially anti-super 
 naturalist scholarship — is poor furniture for the 
 interpretation of Scripture, and least of all for 
 such a book as this, it will not have been 
 quite useless. 
 
 5. This new power, called " the beast," is 
 a purely ecclesiastical power, and in character 
 and purpose is a diabolical power : for " the 
 dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and 
 great authority." And " he opened his mouth 
 in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme 
 
ro8 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 His name, and His tabernacle (His Church), 
 and them that dwell in heaven " (? saints and 
 angels). " And it was given to him to make 
 war with the saints, and to overcome them : 
 and there was given to him authority over 
 every tribe and people and tongue and nation," 
 — that is, over all the territories of the old 
 empire, now Christianised (xiii. 2, 5 — 7). 
 
 In Daniel's vision this feature of his " fourth 
 beast" comes strikingly out. It was ''diverse 
 from all the beasts that were before it " — which 
 can only mean that it was not a secular or 
 worldly power ; while its blasphemies stand 
 out in what is said of the " little horn " which 
 "came up among" the ten horns of this 
 beast : it " had a mouth speaking great things " 
 (compare Rev. xiii. 5 : " And there was given 
 to him a mouth speaking great things and blas- 
 phemies "). y\nd " because of the voice of the 
 great words which the horn spake, I beheld 
 even till the beast was slain, and his body 
 destroyed, and he was given to be burned 
 with fire" (Dan. vii. 8, 11). 
 
 6. Whereas the other three beasts in Daniel's 
 •vision were like the three fiercest of the beasts 
 of prey, and there was no fiercer to liken the 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 109 
 
 fourth one to, our Apocalyptic beast combines 
 in himself the properties of the other three 
 (xiii. 2), as being the most dreadful of all ; 
 accordingly, Daniel says he was " dreadful, and 
 terrible, and strong exceedingly " (vii. 7), 
 
 7. We have seen that all the States that 
 succeeded to the territories of the old empire 
 — though independent of each other — owned a 
 common authority. And this authority, being 
 in its own nature purely ecclesiastical, and so 
 not conflicting with theirs, could be willingly 
 recognised by all. So far, in fact, was it from' 
 being an enforced subjection, yielded in spite 
 of its blasphemies, it was yielded to expressly 
 in that character. For it is said : " They wor- 
 shipped the dragon, because he gave authority 
 to the beast ; and they worshipped the beast, 
 saying. Who is like unto the beast ? and who 
 is able to make war with him } " (xiii. 4). 
 
 Now, mark this terrible compound of Church 
 and State ; for it explains all the seeming 
 contradictions in what is said of " the beast " 
 in the succeeding chapters of this book. Thus, 
 he is said to do things which in his own sphere 
 he could not do. He " makes war with the 
 saints, and overcomes them." But not a hair 
 
no THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 of their heads could he touch as an ecclesiastical 
 power. His business was to summon before 
 his proper tribunal all who dared to dispute his 
 monstrous claims and protest against his blas- 
 phemies ; and having convicted them of " heresy," 
 to hand them over to the civil " authorities " of 
 the states to whose jurisdiction they belonged, 
 to be by them put to death. Thus neatly was 
 the business managed. Most effectually was the 
 "deadly wound" healed ; the loss of hnperial 
 authority in the person of the last emperor 
 being more than supplied by Papal supremacy. 
 It was a mutual gain. It gave the inde- 
 pendent Sovereignties of the fallen empire a 
 unity they much needed — a unity, too, of such 
 strength as the empire itself never possessed. 
 In return for this, they one and all, as Chris- 
 tian states, rendered implicit obedience to their 
 ecclesiastical head. Nor was he, on his part, 
 slow to realise his position and assert his 
 supremacy. It was truly the master-stroke ot 
 the dragon's policy. And its development, 
 with all its bloody results, will come up before 
 us in the succeeding chapters. 
 
 8. The duration of this bestial power is the 
 only other feature of it as depicted in xiii. i — 5 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. iii 
 
 which remains to be noticed. " There was 
 given to him authority to continue forty and 
 two (prophetic) months " — the same period as 
 " one thousand two hundred and threescore 
 days " (xii. 6), and " a time, and times, and half 
 a time" (xii. 14), or 1260 years. What this 
 precise period is in history I inquire not 
 here. But two things about it, which stand 
 out on the face of it, I do notice. (0 ^ 
 power whose duration is so protracted can 
 be no single individual, and therefore must 
 be sought in Ike successive occupants of the seat 
 of office. (2) At whatever period we date the 
 beginning and end of this power, no one ac- 
 quainted with Church history can fail to find 
 where the authority rested which for nearly a 
 thousand years had a tribunal erected, before 
 which were summoned all within Christendom 
 who dared to dispute its claims and protest 
 against its blasphemies, there to be tried for 
 " heresy,"' and when convicted — which they 
 always were — handed over to the civil authori- 
 ties to whose jurisdiction they belonged, to be 
 by them put to death, until the number of 
 those who suffered martyrdom, in every form 
 of cruelty, exceeded all computation. VVkei^e 
 
112 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 could be found the seat of a power from which 
 could issue mandates so diabolical, and under 
 the sanction of our holy religion ? Church 
 history has but one answer to this question : 
 The city of the seven hills, "that great city 
 which reigneth over the kings of the earth " 
 (xvii. 1 8) — " the eternal city. " 
 
 Having seen, at some length, how the 
 Explanatory Vision of chap. xii. — xiii. confirms 
 by its details all that we find predicted in the 
 first, fifth, and sixth seals, let us now turn to 
 the Explanatory Vision of chap. xi. 
 
 MEASURING THE TEMPLE, THE ALTAR, AND 
 THE WORSHIPPERS. 
 
 " And there was given me a reed like unto 
 a rod : and one * said, Rise, and measure the 
 temple" — or "sanctuary" {va6%) — "the altar, 
 and them that worship therein. But the court 
 which is without the temple leave out without, 
 and measure it not ; for it is given to the 
 nations," or " Gentiles" (xii. 2). 
 
 * The words " the angel stood " (in the received text and A.V.) 
 are not found in the best authorities. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 113 
 
 In Zech. ii. i, etc., we have a similar Vision, 
 from which we learn that "measuring the 
 temple " is a symbol for appropriating to the 
 Lord what is thus " measured off." Con- 
 sequently, " the court which is without the 
 temple, which was to be left out, and not 
 measured, because it was given to the nations," 
 means a worship and worshippers that the 
 Lord would not own as His. So there is an 
 inner and an outer circle, a Church within the 
 Church — " a holy priesthood, offering spiritual 
 sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus 
 Christ" (i Peter ii. 5); and a body of hypo- 
 critical worshippers who cry, " The temple of 
 the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of 
 the Lord are these " (Jer vii. 4) ; but to whom 
 the Lord of the temple says : " To what pur- 
 pose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
 Me ? . . . When ye come to appear before Me, 
 who hath required this at your hand, to tread My 
 courts ? Bring no more vain oblations : . . 
 I am weary to bear them " (Isa. i. 11, etc.). 
 
 All this is expressed in terms of the literal 
 temple. After the dispersion of the Jews, 
 their religion made considerable way among 
 the heathen, and a large number of professed 
 
 8 
 
114 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 worshippers of Jehovah had to be provided 
 for in the services of the temple ; accordingly, 
 the court which was without the temple was 
 appropriated to them. But many of these, 
 and especially their children and descendants, 
 greatly degenerated ; and not being children 
 of Abraham, the Jews looked clown upon them 
 very much as Christians are apt to do upon a 
 " converted Jew." 
 
 Such is that " outer court " of Christians, 
 called the " Gentiles." But they are worse 
 than merely nominal Christians : for " the holy 
 city shall they tread under foot forty and two 
 months " (xi. 2). 
 
 This last figure is taken from our Lord's pre- 
 diction, that " Jerusalem shall be trodden clown 
 of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles 
 shall be fulfilled" (Luke xxi. 24); while the 
 period of this " treading " (forty-two prophetic 
 months) brings us in line with all that we 
 have found of that blasphem.ous Power which 
 " makes war with the saints and overcomes 
 them," and to whom power is given to con- 
 tinue forty and two months. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 115 
 
 THE TWO WITNESSES. 
 
 " And I will give unto My two witnesses, 
 and they shall prophesy a thousand two 
 hundred and threescore days, clothed in sack- 
 cloth" (xi. 3). 
 
 Under the Jewish law two witnesses were 
 required to make a valid testimony to any fact. 
 Three would be better, but less than two would 
 not do (Deut. xvii. 6). So that there would 
 be left to Christ, during that cloudy and dark 
 day, barely a valid testimony — what He Him- 
 self affectingly calls " My two witnesses " — so 
 effectually would " the Gentiles," or Gentilised 
 Church, tread under foot " the holy city." 
 No wonder that these two witnesses had to 
 utter their testimony "clothed in sackcloth"! 
 Bishop Wordsworth and others take the two 
 witnesses to mean the Old Testament and the 
 New. But, besides that this way of dividing 
 the Scriptures is quite a modern one, the 
 Scriptures can with no propriety be said to 
 prophesy clothed in sackcloth It is living 
 witnesses for Christ that we are to see here ; 
 and what follows confirms this. 
 
 " These are the two olive trees and the two 
 
ii6 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 candlesticks, standing before the Lord * of the 
 earth " (xi. 4). To understand this we must 
 turn to Zech. iv., with which the reader is 
 supposed to be famihar, just as in xiii. i he 
 is supposed to be familiar with Dan. vii. In 
 Zechariah's Vision one candlestick only is 
 seen : here they are two, because the testimony 
 of each of the two witnesses is needed to be 
 a valid testimony for Christ, as we have seen. 
 In Zechariah's Vision we find that the two 
 olive trees supply the oil that gives and keeps 
 in the light of both candlesticks. And we 
 have the interpretation of this from the angel 
 that talked with the prophet : " Not by might, 
 nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord 
 of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain ? 
 before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain : 
 and He shall bring forth the head stone with 
 shoutings of Grace, grace unto it" (Zech. 
 iv. 6, 7). Yes, it is only by the indwelling 
 of the Spirit of Christ in the few scattered 
 witnesses for the truth, that they can hold out 
 against that overwhelming Power which they 
 have to withstand during that dismal period. 
 " And if any one seek to hurt them, fire 
 
 * So read the best authorities. See Zech. iv. 14. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 117 
 
 proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth 
 them : and if any one shall seek to hurt them, 
 in this manner must he be killed" (xi. 5). 
 This is explained by what is said of the Old 
 Testament prophets, as Jer. i. 10 — " Behold, I 
 have put My word in thy mouth : see, I have 
 this day set the& over the nations and over the 
 kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, and 
 to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to 
 plant"; also v. 14 — "Behold, I will make My 
 words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, 
 and it shall devour them " ; and Hos. vi. 3 — 
 "Therefore have I hewed them by the words 
 of My mouth." In other words, what the 
 prophets were made to utter, God would cause 
 to be executed. Accordingly, when Christ's 
 witnesses "prophesy" — all out of sight in the 
 wilderness, and in sackcloth — against the vast 
 antichristianism that stifles the Gospel, their 
 voice is Christ's voice, and their denunciations 
 of its blasphemies and its cruelties, their word, 
 will certainly take effect. 
 
 " These have the power to shut heaven, that 
 it rain not in the days of their prophecy : and 
 they have power over the waters to turn them 
 to blood, and to smite the earth with every 
 
ii8 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 plague, as often as they shall desire '" (xi. 6) 
 We have here a twofold prediction — negative, 
 no rain ; positive, to poison the waters. In the 
 former case the reference is to the dearth which 
 Elijah's prediction brought upon the land of 
 Israel in the reign of Ahab, who did his utmost 
 to corrupt the worship of Jehovah, as this anti- 
 christian Power would do during Jiis reign. In 
 the latter case, their turning the waters into 
 blood, the allusion is to the first of the plagues 
 of Egypt, and the deadly effects of it. The 
 meaning is, that while there would be a dearth 
 of all food for hungry souls, the teaching given 
 forth during the reign of Antichrist would be 
 ruinous to his subjects. 
 
 For important additions to this (omitted by 
 mistake), see Addendum I. 
 
 MARTYRDOM, RESURRECTION, AND ASCENSION 
 OF THE WITNESSES. 
 
 "And when they shall have finished their 
 testimony, the beast that cometh up from the 
 abyss (Gr. ' bottomless depth ') shall make war 
 with them, and overcome them, and kill them " 
 (xi. 7). In xiii. 7 this is given as one of the 
 characteristics of " the beast " (see pp. 107, 108) ; 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 119 
 
 but here it is that one effort by which he 
 hopes to finish the business of putting an end 
 to all open witness for Christ. 
 
 "And their dead bodies shall lie in the street 
 of the great city, which spiritually is called 
 Sodom and Egypt, where also their* Lord 
 was crucified " (xi. 8). 
 
 For a dead body to lie unburied in the street 
 of a great city, exposed to the gaze of all 
 passers-by, is a mark of supreme contempt in 
 every country. That no literal city is here 
 meant, it is needless to say ; and the three 
 characteristics of it are so striking that it 
 would seem impossible to doubt what it is. 
 Spiritually called, it is ''Sodom',' for its 
 filthiness ; spiritually, it is ''Egypt,'' for the op- 
 pressions of God's people : " where also their 
 Lord was crucified," — for in the slaughter of 
 these His faithful witnesses they "crucify 
 the Son of God afresh, and put Him to 
 an open shame" (Heb. vi. 6). Where are 
 these three characteristics to be found but 
 in Roman Christendoin } 
 
 " And from among the peoples and tribes 
 
 * Such is the genuine reading here. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 and tongues and nations men look upon their 
 dead bodies three days and a half (symbolically 
 understood), and suffer not their dead bodies 
 to be laid in a tomb. And they that dwell on 
 the earth rejoice over them, and make merry : 
 and they shall send gifts one to another, 
 because these two prophets tormented them 
 that dwell on the earth" (xi. 9, 10). 
 
 This is simply a hyperbolical way of express- 
 ing the exulting confidence of the antichristian 
 worshippers of the beast, that now at length 
 they have got rid of those "tormenting" 
 heretics along the whole line. 
 
 " And after the three days and a half the 
 spirit of life from God entered into them, and 
 they stood upon their feet ; and great fear fell 
 upon them which saw them. And they heard 
 a great Voice from heaven saying unto them, 
 Come up hither. And they went up into 
 heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld 
 them" (xi. 11, 12). 
 
 As the slaying of the witnesses symbolised 
 the extinction of their testimony, so their 
 resurrection and triumphant ascension into 
 heaven, in the sight and to the terror of their 
 enemies, means the resuscitation of their testi- 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 121 
 
 mony to Christ and His saving truth, in the 
 unexpected appearance of a body of living 
 witnesses — no longer "clothed in sackcloth," 
 but boldly proclaiming buried truths. 
 
 "And there was a great earthquake, and 
 the tenth part of the city fell ; and there 
 were killed in the earthquake seven thousand 
 persons (Gr. 'names of men'): and the rest 
 were affrighted, and gave glory to the God 
 of heaven " (xi. 13). 
 
 Since " the great city " of verse 8 was not 
 Rome itself, but Roman Christendom, the fall 
 of the tenth part of it can mean nothing 
 else than the revolt of a vast number from 
 its authority — their secession from its pale ; 
 while the " earthquake " that caused it means 
 its convulsive character. It reminds one of 
 Ezekiel's Vision of the dry bones — " very many, 
 and very dry in the open valley." Could such 
 bones live } Yes, when they were " prophesied 
 to." Then the bones "came together"; and 
 the prophet having prophesied to the wind, 
 breath came into them, and they lived and 
 stood up a great army. This meant the whole 
 house of Israel resuscitated from their dead 
 state of idolatrous departure from Jehovah : 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 this is the whole testimony of Jesus Christ, 
 slain in the persons of Christ's " two witnesses," 
 or all that openly remained for Him, but 
 now resuscitated in a vast body of living 
 witnesses, not afraid of the threats of Anti- 
 christ. Where, now, is his proud boast of the 
 " marks of a true Church," possessed solely by 
 him ? Visibility, we have seen, is exactly what 
 was wanting m " the temple, the altar, and they 
 that worship therein" — the only Church which 
 Christ "measured" off as His own, during the 
 predicted period of " forty and two (prophetic) 
 months " (xi. i, 2). This was no mark of a true 
 Church. And now its other boast of tmiiy, 
 that also is gone. The " earthquake " revealed 
 the gap made in the hitherto unbroken ranks 
 of the antichristian Church, breaking off from 
 Rome just the most intelligent and powerful 
 countries of Europe — Germany and Switzerland, 
 the United Netherlands and Great Britain. And 
 what is of special significance is, that this breach 
 has never been healed ; nor have the three suc- 
 ceeding centuries given any indication of a retro- 
 grade tendency, but much the reverse. There 
 have from time to time been ebbs and flows 
 of the tide ; but eyes that can read the inner 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 123 
 
 springs of human actions see clearly whither 
 the light and life and health and strength of 
 Christianity are resistlessly tending, under the 
 guiding Eye of Him who gave it birth. 
 
 In fact, the sequel of this chapter speaks 
 as much: "The second Woe is past : behold, 
 the third Woe cometh quickly. And the 
 seventh angel sounded ; and there followed 
 great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom * 
 of the world is become the kingdom of our 
 Lord, and of His Christ : and He shall reign 
 for ever and ever" (xi. 14, 15), 
 
 But this is only the final catastrophe 
 announced in one burst of celestial triumph 
 (see pp. "ij, 88). For it was, as we shall 
 presently see, to require seven outpourings of 
 the vials of God's wrath to bring the kingdom 
 of the beast to utter extinction. "And the 
 four and twenty elders, which sit before God 
 on their thrones, fell upon their faces, and 
 worshipped God, saying, We give Thee thanks, 
 O Lord God, the Almighty, which art and 
 which wast, and which art to come ; f because 
 
 * So both the MSS. and the versions read. 
 t This last clause, omitted in the R.V., is, I think, sufficiently 
 vouched for. 
 
124 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Thou hast taken Thy great power, and didst 
 reign. And the nations were wroth, and Thy 
 wrath came, and the time of the dead to be 
 judged (see vi. lo), and to give their reward 
 to Thy servants the prophets, and to the 
 saints, and to them that fear Thy name, the 
 small and the great ; and to destroy them that 
 destroy the earth " (xi. i6 — 18) — in other words, 
 to give redress of all public (antichristian) 
 wrongs.* 
 
 " And there was opened the temple of God 
 (the ' sanctuary ' — i^ad?) that is in heaven ; and 
 there was seen in His temple the ark of His 
 covenant ; and there followed lightnings, and 
 voices, and thunders, and an earthquake, and 
 great hail" (xi. 19). 
 
 But why did the temple require opening ? 
 for we found (xi. i) that the sanctuary (the 
 
 * When we find language like this — of "judging" enemies 
 of the truth, and "rewarding" the faithful — we must not im- 
 mediately conclude that the "time" referred to is "the day 
 when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ," 
 " the judgment of the great day." We should always consider 
 whether the party spoken of is particular individitals or public 
 bodies or systctfis. As tliese can only be judged in this life, 
 and on the theatre of the present world, the "judgment" of 
 them can only be the complete overthrow of them. Yet this is 
 far too much overlooked. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 125 
 
 ^'tto?) was not only open, but the altar and 
 worshippers were seen in it. The answer is, 
 that it had been daringly shut by ^/le Chiu'ch, 
 which taught that, instead of every believer 
 "having boldness to enter into the holiest by 
 the blood of Jesus" (Heb. x. 19), there is 
 required the intervention of a human priest 
 in the transactions between the soul and God. 
 No wonder that the " searching of the Scrip- 
 tures," which teaches the reverse of this, is 
 frowned upon and all but legally prohibited ! 
 *'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites ! for ye shut up the kingdom of God 
 against men : for ye enter not in yourselves, 
 neither suffer ye them that are entering 
 to go in." But the year of release has 
 come, and the slaves are free. And the con- 
 cussion of the elements — the lightnings, and 
 voices, and thunders, and the earthquake, 
 and great hail — are the symbolic expression 
 of the revolutionary crash of this mighty 
 movement. 
 
 Such, then, is the grand catastrophe ; but 
 it is only announced in one brief outburst of 
 triumph. For the kingdom of the beast has 
 
126 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 been too slowly and solidly built up, and of too 
 long duration, to quickly disappear. Shaken 
 to its centre we have seen it to have been by 
 the earthquake of the sixteenth century ; and 
 what it has lost it will never recover. But 
 the Seven Vials that fill up the wrath of God 
 against this dragon-inspired Power have yet 
 to be poured out. 
 
 THE SEVEN VIALS. 
 
 " And I saw another sign in heaven, great 
 and marvellous : seven angels having seven 
 plagues, which are the last ; for in them is 
 finished the wrath of God. And I saw as it 
 were a glassy sea mingled with fire ; and them 
 that come victorious from the beast, and from 
 his image, and from his mark, and from the 
 number of his name, standing on the glassy 
 sea, having harps of God" (xv. i). 
 
 This word-picture is singularly expressive 
 both of their untroubled safety and the fiery 
 trial through which they reached it. It is the 
 noble army of martyrs who, during the long 
 reign of that blasphemous Power, counted not 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 127 
 
 their lives dear unto them, but cheerfully 
 surrendered them rather than deny the Lord 
 that bought them. 
 
 THE CHORAL HYMN. 
 
 "And they sing the song of Moses and the 
 song of the Lamb.'' 
 
 Yes, " the song of Moses " : " The enemy 
 said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide 
 the spoil : my lust shall be satisfied upon 
 them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall 
 devour them. Thou didst blow with thy wind, 
 the sea covered them : they sank as lead in 
 the mighty waters" (Exod. xv. 9, 10). "So 
 let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord : but 
 let them that love Thee be as the sun when 
 he goeth forth in his might" (Judg. v. 31). 
 
 "And the song of the Lamb": for "they 
 overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by 
 the word of their testimony ; and they loved 
 not their lives even unto death" (xii. 11). 
 But for this ^nal victory they have a special 
 note of praise, saying, " Great and marvellous 
 are Thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty ; 
 righteous and true are Thy ways. Thou King 
 
128 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 of the nations.* Who shall not fear Thee, 
 O Lord, and glorify Thy name ? for Thou only 
 art holy ; for all the nations shall come and 
 worship before Thee, for Thy righteous acts 
 have been made manifest " (xv. 3, 4). The 
 allusion here, I think, is to the breaking up 
 of the whole complicated system of anti- 
 christianism — Church and State ; each working 
 into the other's hands, each for its own ends, 
 and both against Christ. 
 
 " And after these things I saw, and behold 
 the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony 
 in heaven was opened : and there came out 
 from the temple the seven angels that had the 
 seven last plagues, clothed with fine linen, f 
 pure and bright, and girt about the breasts 
 with golden girdles. And one of the four 
 living creatures gave unto the seven angels 
 seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, 
 who liveth for ever and ever. And the temple 
 
 * There are three readings of this clause : " King of saints " 
 (received text and A.V.) ; " King of the ages " (R.V.) ; and " King 
 of the nations." This last is, I think, best supported, and best 
 suits the context. 
 
 t Not (as in the R.V.) " arrayed with [precious] stone, pure 
 and bright " — one of the very worst readings, of which have 
 elsewhere written. (See Addendum II., p. 219.) 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 129 
 
 was filled with smoke from the glory of God, 
 and from His power; and no one was able 
 to enter into the temple, till the seven 
 plagues of the seven angels were finished " 
 (XV. 5-8). 
 
 The general import of this seems to be that, 
 till the air could be cleared of the noxious 
 worship that had been offered there by the 
 followers of Antichrist, those who "offer 
 spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus 
 Christ," could not be seen there. 
 
 To take up each of these last Septenaries 
 in detail, is no part of my plan in this 
 A B C of the Apocalypse ; but only to 
 do as with the Seals and the Trumpets, — to 
 indicate what seem to be the turning-points 
 of historical prediction which, as we judge, 
 they contain. It is a succession of "plagues" 
 to befall the kingdom of Antichrist, in one 
 feature of it or another. Some of them are 
 very significant. Thus, the third is (like the 
 first of the plagues of Egypt) " turning the 
 waters into blood!' Yes, says the angel of the 
 waters, and " Thou art righteous, O Lord, who 
 hast thus judged : for they shed the blood of 
 saints and prophets, and blood hast Thou given 
 
I30 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 them to drink, for they are worthy. And I 
 heard the altar " *- — a voice, it would seem, from 
 "the souls of them that had been slain, for 
 the Word of God and for the testimony which 
 they held " (not now against Paganism, as in 
 vi. lo, but against y^/^//^/^r/j•/) — "Yea, O Lord 
 God, the Almighty, true and righteous are 
 Thy judgments" (xvi. 4 — 7). 
 
 " The fifth angel poured out his vial upon 
 the throne of the beast" — the seat of supreme 
 ecclesiastical authority; "and his kingdom 
 was full of darkness" — like the ninth, and all 
 but the last, of the plagues of Egypt. What 
 this darkness may be must be left to the 
 events themselves to tell. But the effect — 
 "And they gnawed their tongues for pains, 
 and blasphemed the God of heaven, and 
 repented not of their works " — that we can 
 well understand. 
 
 One obstacle only, to the capture of " Baby- 
 lon" and the fall of the "throne of the beast," 
 remained to be taken out of the way ; and this 
 is predicted in the sixth vial : — 
 
 "And the sixth angel poured out his vial 
 
 * So read the best authorities. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 131 
 
 upon the great river, the river Euphrates ; 
 and the waters thereof were dried up, that 
 the way might be made ready for the kings 
 that come from the East (Gr. * the sun-rising ') " 
 (xvi. 12). 
 
 The river Euphrates was the glory of 
 the literal Babylon, and made it impregnable, 
 until Cyrus and the princes that followed him 
 turned its course and dried up its waters. 
 Having thus entered it dry-shod, Babylon fell, 
 and the kingdom with it. And thus the last 
 obstacle to the fall of mystical Babylon and 
 the kingdom of Antichrist — whatever that 
 may be — will be taken out of the way.* 
 
 "And I saw coming out of the mouth of the 
 dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and 
 out of the mouth of the false prophet, three 
 unclean spirits, as it were frogs : for they are 
 spirits of demons, working signs ; which go 
 forth unto the kings of the whole world, to 
 gather them together to the war of the great 
 day of God, the Almighty" (xvi. 13, 14). 
 
 * Those who take the "drying up of the river Euphrates" to 
 point to the fall of the Turkish Empire, and "the kings of the 
 East " to be the Jews returning to their own land go very wide 
 of the mark. 
 
132 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 All the malignant elements of the carnal 
 mind, which is enmity against God, seem here 
 represented. Whatever comes from the mouth 
 of the dragon must be the diabolical spirit, 
 pure and simple ; that from the mouth of 
 the beast (as distinguished from " the false 
 prophet ") must be the civil arm of Antichrist, 
 that which carries into execution the sentences 
 of the head of the Church, shedding the blood 
 of the saints ; and that which comes out of the 
 mouth of the false prophet can be no other 
 than the claims of "the man of sin and son of 
 perdition," who " opens his mouth in blasphe- 
 mies against God, to blaspheme His name, and 
 His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven." 
 All these malignant spirits, which were "like 
 frogs" (unclean, noisy, offensive creatures) "are 
 the spirits of demons," * taking active pos- 
 
 * It is a pity that the New Testament revisers have retained 
 from the A.V. tlie word " devils " in this and all other places 
 where the word occurs. The Greek word for " devil " is never 
 used in the New Testament, but always a diminutive of the 
 won! "demon." A good deal is lost by this. Thus, in James 
 ii. 19, "Thou believest that there is one God: the (demons 
 believe, and tremble " — an express reference to the shriek which 
 they gave at the sight of their future Tormentor: — "Wiiat have 
 we to do witii Tiice, Jesus, thou Soil of God ? art Thou come 
 to torment us before tlie time?" (Matt. viii. 29). The distinction 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 133 
 
 session of those who are their willing tools, and 
 inspiring them with hostility to Christ. 
 
 " Working signs : " compare 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10, 
 — Even he, whose coming is according to the 
 working of Satan, with all power and signs 
 and lying wonders, and with all deceit of un- 
 righteousness for them that are perishing ; 
 because they believed not the love of the 
 truth, that they might be saved." 
 
 " Which go forth unto the kings of the whole 
 world, to gather them together to the war of 
 the great day of God, the Almighty " (xvi. 14). 
 A gigantic confederacy against Christ. 
 
 " Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth 
 his garments, lest he walk naked, and they 
 see his shame" (xvi. 15). This is a note of 
 preparation for the final catastrophe ; and, as 
 I judge, a call to such of "God's people" as 
 are still in " Babylon " to come out of her in 
 time, lest they be involved in her ruin (see on 
 xviii. 4). 
 
 " And they gathered them together into the 
 
 seems to be this : when the word " devil " is used, it is always 
 in connection with sin, as tempting to the commission of it, and 
 stimulating the sinful principle ; whereas, when one is possessed 
 by a " demon," he is for the time not his own conscious self, but 
 is the organ of one who tJiroiigh him is the speaker and actor. 
 
134 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 place which is called in Hebrew Har-Magedon " 
 (xvi. 16). The allusion seems to be to Megiddo, 
 where Josiah was slain (2 Chron. xxxv. 22 ; 
 and compare Zech. xii. 11), The details of 
 this last war are resei^ved, to be taken up in 
 chap. xix. II — 21. 
 
 Now comes the announcement of the final 
 catastrophe : " And the seventh angel poured 
 out his vial upon the air ; and there came 
 forth a great voice out of the temple, from 
 the throne, saying. It is done. And there were 
 lightnings and voices and thunders : and there 
 was a great earthquake, such as there was not 
 since men were upon the earth, so great an 
 earthquake and so mighty. And the great 
 city was divided into three parts, and the cities 
 of the nations fell," — all expressive of such 
 a revolutionary crash as would leave nothing 
 of what had been the most outstanding and 
 seemingly enduring features of the former 
 condition of Church and State. 
 
 " And Babylon the great was remembered 
 in the sight of God, to give unto her the cup 
 of the wine of the fierceness of His. wrath. 
 And every island fled away, and the mountains 
 were not found. And great hail, every stone 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 135 
 
 about the weight of a talent, cometh down 
 out of heaven upon men : and men blasphemed 
 God because of the plague of the hail ; for 
 the plague thereof was exceeding great ' 
 (xvi. 19 — 21). 
 
 Now, for the first time, the great city which 
 spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt and Jeru- 
 salem (the slaughterhouse of the prophets, 
 "where also the Lord was crucified" — xi. 8), 
 gets the name of "Babylon the Great," — its time 
 of doom has at length come into remembrance 
 in the sight of God ; and. the cry is heard, 
 " Fallen, fallen is Babylon ! " (xviii. 2). 
 
 Thus closes the last of the Septenary series 
 — that of the Seven Vials ; and with it all that 
 Divine Wisdom has seen it fit to announce 
 beforehand of the fate of that gigantic anti- 
 christian edifice of Church and State, the 
 features of which, so fully described in pre- 
 ceding chapters, we have pointed out in 
 detail. 
 
 But, as if to make assurance doubly sure as 
 to what this accursed system is, a key to the 
 whole mystery is given in — 
 
136 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Chap. xvii. 
 THE KEY TO THE MYSTERY. 
 
 " And there came one of the seven angels 
 which had the Seven Vials, and spake with 
 me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the 
 judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon 
 many waters " — that is, as explained in verse 
 15, "peoples and multitudes and nations and 
 tongues " (the consolidated fragments of the 
 broken empire) — "with whom the kings of 
 the earth have committed fornication, and 
 they that dwell in the earth (their subjects) 
 have been made drunk with the wine of her 
 fornication. And he carried me away in the 
 Spirit into a wilderness : and I saw a woman 
 sitting upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of 
 names of blasphemy, having seven heads and 
 ten horns" (xvii, i — 7). 
 
 Yes : now we have it out. The " woman " of 
 chap. xii. i, once the beauteous young "bride, 
 the Lamb's wife," alas, how changed ! Raised 
 to honour in the empire, she that was so long 
 persecuted is now patronised and petted — 
 caressed until she yields to the embraces of a 
 stranger, and has become a harlot ! And what 
 stranger she embraced the symbol itself tells 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 137 
 
 US : it is the beast with seven heads and ten 
 horns, but the diadems no longer on the heads 
 (xii. 3), but on the horns (xiii. i). For, says 
 the angel, it is " the kings of the earth " that 
 commit fornication with her. But since these 
 "kings" had no existence till "the heads" 
 ceased to exist on the fall of the Empire, this 
 fixes the sense to be that of the " kings " that 
 followed the breaking up of the Empire — 
 the "horns" that had the diadems when there 
 were no " heads." 
 
 " And the woman was arrayed in purple 
 and scarlet, and decked in precious stones and 
 pearls " — the sumptuous gifts of the kings to 
 her, in return for what she did for them. Thus 
 beautifully did Church and State play into each 
 other's hands — the kings, including " them that 
 dwell on the earth " (the rich laity), vying with 
 each other who would do most honour to the 
 Church ; providing for it on a scale correspond- 
 ing with the grades of rank and wealth in the 
 State ; while she, on the other side, compacts 
 them — though each independent of the other — 
 into one solid Christendom, — a gigantic engine 
 of Church and State, which for more than a 
 thousand years, as the Church condemned to 
 
138 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 death as " heretic " all who dared to refuse its 
 claims, while as the State its sentences were 
 dutifully executed. 
 
 What do I see in this ? I see reproduced 
 to the life the story of Herodias and Herod 
 Antipas in their treatment of John the Baptist. 
 When that holy man dared to say to Herod, 
 "It is not lawful for thee to have her," from 
 that moment his head was forfeited. Herod 
 would have stood this ; for he had a conscience, 
 and "did many things, and heard John gladly." 
 But that wretch with whom he lived had no 
 sense of shame, and was determined to have 
 his life. Herod compromised the matter by 
 imprisoning the holy man. But so long as he 
 lived to trouble her royal paramour she could 
 not rest ; and at length she found her oppor- 
 tunity. At a great birthday feast, with all 
 the high magnates of the kingdom around 
 him, Herodias had her daughter brought in to 
 dance lasciviously before them. And so fasci- 
 nated was the king that, in a hasty moment — 
 perhaps in his cups — he promised her with an 
 oath whatsoever she might ask, to the half of 
 his kingdom. " What am I to ask ? " said the 
 poor girl to her mother, "The head of John 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 139 
 
 the Baptist," was the instant reply. She herself 
 could not touch a hair of his head, but she had 
 the king now in her fix. He was stung by the 
 unexpected demand ; but he had passed his 
 word, and it had to be done. The keep of the 
 castle where the feast was held was no doubt 
 the place of John's imprisonment — within a few 
 yards of the banquet hall. The executioner 
 therefore would quickly do his business ; and, 
 returning with the bleeding head in a charger, 
 give it to the girl, and she to her mother. 
 And we can imagine how that vile woman 
 would gloat over the ghastly spectacle. 
 
 Even so, our " harlot," though she could not 
 herself "shed the blood of the saints and of the 
 martyrs of Jesus," could cause the execution 
 of her cruel sentences by "the kings" — by an 
 auto da fe (an " Act of Faith "). No wonder, 
 then, that she was seen " drunken with their 
 blood." 
 
 " Having in her hand a golden cup, full of 
 abominations, and the unclean things of her 
 fornication. And upon her forehead a name 
 written, Mystery, mystery, Babylon the 
 
 GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS, AND OF 
 THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I SaW 
 
I40 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the woman drunken with the blood of the 
 saints and of the martyrs of Jesus. And when 
 I saw her I wondered with great wonder. 
 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst 
 thou wonder } I will tell thee the mystery of 
 the woman, and of the beast which carrieth 
 her, which hath the seven heads and the ten 
 horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is 
 not, and is about to come up out of the abyss 
 and to go into perdition " (xvii. 4 — 8). 
 
 " The beast " is the seven-headed and ten- 
 horned dragon of chap. xii. 3; and "it was'' 
 while the diadems were on the " heads!' But it 
 " was not," when the heads (or what they meant) 
 ceased to exist, on the fall of the Empire. But 
 it " was about to come up out of the abyss," 
 when it appeared in a new form — wounded to 
 death, but the wound healed — a blasphemous 
 and bloody form, inspired by the great red 
 dragon to drink the blood of the saints, and of 
 the martyrs of Jesus; but "to go into perdition." 
 
 "And they that dwell on the earth shall 
 wonder, they whose names have not been 
 written in the book of life from the foundation 
 of the world, when they behold the beast, how 
 that he was, and is not, and is to come." 
 
/7:S- PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 141 
 
 Though the language here employed would 
 
 seem to take in its sweep all but those who are 
 
 to be saved, it is evident from chap, xiii, that 
 
 only those who have identified the^nselves with the 
 
 system, its originators, manufacturers, upholders 
 
 and agents in its blasphemies and cruelties, are 
 
 included. Let any one read the description of 
 
 them in 2 Thess. ii. 10 — 12, and he will see 
 
 how inapplicable that is to vast numbers of the 
 
 nominal adherents of antichristian Romanism. 
 
 So far from such not having their names in the 
 
 book of life, we shall find when we come to 
 
 chap, xviii. that God will have a people whom 
 
 He calls His own in " Babylon " almost to its 
 
 fall. But the class here meant is a totally 
 
 different class. And of them we must learn to 
 
 think as God Himself and all holy men do. Can 
 
 we but execrate men who, as members of " the 
 
 Holy Inquisition," for example — established by 
 
 the supreme authority of the Church to try 
 
 "heretics" — could year after year doom to 
 
 death, in every form of cruelty, some of the 
 
 noblest characters, including ladies of the 
 
 highest distinction, in cold blood and in the 
 
 name of religion ? In view of such things, 
 
 one is constrained to say, with the Psalmist, 
 
142 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 " Do not I hate all them that hate Thee ? 
 Can I but be grieved with them that rise 
 up against Thee ? I hate them with perfect 
 hatred : I count them mine enemies " (Ps. 
 cxxxix. 2 1, 22). 
 
 ** Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The 
 seven heads are seven mountains on which 
 the woman (the harlot) sitteth," — the city 
 of the seven hills [iirbs septicollis) : " and 
 they are seven kings (or forms of govern- 
 ment) ; the five are fallen : the one is, and 
 the other is not yet come : and when he 
 Cometh, he must continue a little while. And 
 the beast that was, and is not, is himself also 
 an eighth, and is of the seven ; and he goeth 
 into perdition " (xvii. 9 — 1 1). 
 
 The mystery of this puzzle is not so great 
 as at first it seems to be. If five of the 
 different forms of government had already 
 fallen, and the one that then existed was that 
 of Emperors, the other, not yet come, must be 
 that which succeeded the fall of the Empire. 
 This is " the beast that waSy' in its Imperial 
 form as a persecuting power, but " ?> nof 
 when the Empire fell ; " he is himself an 
 eighth, and is of the seven " (an eighth, in- 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 143 
 
 asmuch as, being an ecclesiastical power, it 
 was perfectly different from all the others ; 
 but " of the seven, since the same supremacy 
 which characterised all the seven forms was 
 prolonged in this one) : " and he goeth into 
 perdition," being that blasphemous, perse- 
 cuting Power, "drunken with the blood of the 
 saints." 
 
 " And the ten horns which thou sawest are 
 ten kings, which have received no kingdom 
 as yet (while the Empire stood), but they 
 receive authority with the beast for one hour 
 (or contemporaneously with the beast). These 
 have one mind, and they give their power 
 and authority unto the beast (to execute the 
 sentences of death which he pronounces upon 
 the ' heretics '). These shall war against the 
 Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them ; 
 for He is Lord of lords and King of kings ; 
 and they that are with Him are called, and 
 chosen, and faithful." 
 
 Beyond doubt this is a religious war — a 
 last one, and on a vast scale. But this (xvii.) 
 being only an explanatory chapter, the details 
 of it are reserved, and will be found in chap, 
 xix. 1 1 to the end. 
 
144 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 "And he saith unto me, The waters which thou 
 sawest, where the woman sitteth, are peoples 
 and multitudes and nations and tongues," — the 
 nations of Christendom (xvii. 12 — 15). 
 
 But what becomes of "the harlot"? She 
 shares the fate of all harlots — is hated by the 
 powers that seduced her with a hate propor- 
 tioned by the love — the lust wherewith they 
 lusted after her (as in the case of Amnon 
 with his sister Tamar — 2 Sam. xii. 15). 
 
 " And the ten horns which thou sawest, 
 and* the beast, these shall hate the harlot." 
 Let the reader carefully note how " the beast," 
 being a compound power — ecclesiastical and 
 secular combined, as a great engine {condemn- 
 ing in its ecclesiastical capacity and executing 
 secularly the sentences against the " heretics "), 
 is sometimes viewed separately in its ecclesias- 
 tical capacity, and sometimes in its secular. 
 Here it is viewed in its sectilar capacity, 
 and as such it hates the harlot. " These shall 
 kill the harlot, and make her desolate and 
 naked (stripping her, I suppose, of the trap- 
 pings they gave her), and shall eat her Hesh, 
 
 ' Not "upon the beast "--as the received text and A.V. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 145 
 
 and burn her utterly with fire." Under the 
 Jewish law, " the daughter of any priest, if 
 she profane herself by playing the harlot, she 
 profaneth her father, she shall be burned with 
 fire" (Lev. xxi. 9). The significance of this 
 allusion is obvious. 
 
 " For God did put in their mind to do 
 His mind, and to come to one mind, and to 
 give their kingdom (their sovereign authority) 
 unto the beast, until the words of God should 
 be accomplished." 
 
 " And (in a word) the woman whom thou 
 sawest is the great city which reigneth over 
 the kings of the earth " (xvii. 16 — 18). 
 
 Thus ends this explanatory chapter — the 
 " Key," as I have well called it — to the whole 
 symbolical prediction of the great antichristian 
 Power, that has held us so long. 
 
 We are now in possession of all the 
 materials for fixing — if that can be done — the 
 time when the famous 1260 years closed, and of 
 course also when it began. Everything depends 
 (I need not say) on the accuracy of our inter- 
 pretation of the symbols, and of the action of 
 
 TO 
 
146 ■ THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the parties symbolised. But supposing our 
 exposition, in its leading features, to be correct, 
 I now proceed to apply them (with unfeigned 
 diffidence) to the question now before us. 
 
 I have said, then, that all that is predicted 
 of the authority given to " the beast " to 
 " continue for forty and two months," the 
 " worship " paid him throughout this period, 
 and his "war" with the saints, his "over- 
 coming" and "killing" them till they were 
 but Christ's "two witnesses," and even they 
 at length killed — none daring to take up 
 (as John's disciples did to his corpse) their 
 dead bodies to bury them — all this, I have said, 
 expresses to me the period, not of his existence, 
 but of his unimpaired supremacy. Accordingly, 
 I am constrained to date the close of the 
 symbolical " forty-two months " at the time 
 when this supremacy was thoroughly broken 
 — when " the earthquake " caused the tenth part 
 of the city to fall, and there were " slain " 
 symbolically "seven thousand" of his ad- 
 herents, and he could no longer boast of the 
 unity of the Church as one of the marks of 
 a true Church which she alone possessed. 
 That time, I said, was undeniably when the 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 147 
 
 great rupture of the sixteenth century took 
 place. 
 
 But (you will say) does not this throw the 
 beginning of the 1260 years too far back 
 into the earliest Church history ? So I long 
 thought, and regarded it as fatal to the 
 supposed close of this period. But, when I 
 went back to the exegesis of the text, and 
 found it yielded no other result than that 
 given in the preceding pages, I asked myself 
 why we should expect the beginning of this 
 period to be marked so much by unmistakable 
 outstanding events, and whether the first rise 
 of the great antichristian power might not be 
 found to lie at the hidden springs of the 
 ChurcHs defection from Christ. 
 
 Let it never be forgotten that the two great 
 antagonistic and irreconcilable forces that press 
 upon the heart of man are the Church and the 
 world — in the biblical sense of these terms. 
 Neither of these can live under the dominant 
 influence of the other. "Ye (said Christ to 
 His genuine disciples) are the light of the 
 world. . . . Ye are the salt of the earth," — 
 to illuminate and satu rate s ociety with your 
 principles and character. Liv ing Christian ity 
 
148 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 is essentially aggressive ; but so its opposite. 
 "If the light (then) that is in us is darkness, 
 how great is that darkness ! and if the salt has 
 lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? 
 It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be 
 cast out, and trodden under foot of men." 
 
 So long as the ministers of Christ, as* 
 keepers of " the_J<e}^s," are jealous of the 
 Church's purity, and have the courage of their 
 convictions to keep it pure, their Master will 
 own and honour them. But if they letthe 
 world into the Church, its outward form may 
 remain unchanged, but its distinctive character 
 is lost — all that is vital in it dying down, and 
 the way thus prepared for corruptions of every 
 sort. In the Vision of chap. xii. — where the 
 Church is seen in all the beauteous vigour of 
 her youth, as " the Bride the Lamb's wife " — 
 "the dragon," that old serpent, well knowing 
 the key that most easily opens the clerical 
 heart, begins with the ministers of the Church, 
 the "stars of heaven" (i, 20), "a third part of 
 whom with his tail (stealthily) he casts down 
 to the earth." His key to them was ambition, 
 which, like the horselcach, is . never satisfied. 
 Bishops became archbishops ; then came 
 
1T3 PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. I49 
 
 metropolitans, patriarchs, primates — with cor- 
 responding influence and wealth — culminating 
 inevitably in the See of Rome : a See which 
 in persecuting times marked out its occupant 
 as the first to be the victim of the persecuting 
 edict ; but when Christianity, in the person of 
 Constantine, sat on the throne of the Empire, 
 the most coveted of all posts in the Church. 
 
 All this, full-blown, we have not in the 
 Apocalypse (as we have seen), but in two 
 astounding predictions of the apostle Paul — 
 2 Thess. ii. and i Tim. iv. — which not only 
 confirm all that we have found in the Apoca- 
 lypse, but show with what rapidity, when the 
 tide once set in, these things_jHiuld be realised. 
 I must take them up therefore in detail. 
 
 " Now, we beseech you, brethren, touching 
 the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our 
 gathering together unto Him, that ye be not 
 quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be 
 troubled, either by spirit (pretended revela- 
 tions), or by epistles as from us (forged letters), 
 as that the day of the Lord is [now] present 
 (already come). Let no man beguile you in 
 any wise : for [it will not be], except the 
 apostacy (or ' the falling away ') come first, and 
 
ISO THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdi- 
 tion, he that opposeth and exalteth himself 
 against all that is called God or that is wor- 
 shipped. So that he sitteth in the temple (or 
 ' sanctuary ' — ets tov vabv) of God, so that he * 
 setteth himself forth as God. Remember ye 
 not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you 
 these things ? And now ye know that which 
 restraineth, to the end that he may be revealed 
 in his own season. For the mystery of law- 
 lessness doth already work : only [there is] 
 one that restraineth now, until he be taken 
 out of the way. And then shall be revealed 
 the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall 
 slay with the breath of His mouth, and bring 
 to nought by the manifestation of His coming ; 
 even he, whose coming is according to the 
 working of Satan with all power and signs 
 and lying wonders, and with all deceit of 
 unrighteousness for them that are perishing ; 
 because they received not the love of the 
 truth, that they might be saved. And for this 
 cause God sendeth them a working of error, 
 that they should believe a lie, that they all 
 
 * The words in the A.V. (from the received text) — " as God "' — 
 are not in tlie true text. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 151 
 
 might be judged (condemned), who beheved 
 not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteous- 
 ness " (2 Thess. ii. i — 12). 
 
 No less significant, though less extended, is 
 the other prediction, in i Timothy : — 
 |< " Now the Spirit (by the mouth of some 
 prophet) saith expressly, that in later times 
 some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed 
 to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, 
 through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, 
 branded in their own conscience as with a hot 
 iron ; forbidding to marry, and commanding to 
 abstain from meats, which God created to be 
 received with thanksgiving by them that believe 
 and know the truth. For every creature of God 
 is good, and nothing to be rejected, if it be 
 received with thanksgiving : for it is sanctified 
 through the word of God and prayer" (i Tim. 
 iv. 1—5). 
 
 Let us now try to gather up the substance of 
 these pregnant predictions. 
 
 Since in his First Epistle the Second 
 Coming of our Lord had been made so pro- 
 minent, we need not wonder that such raw 
 converts as the Thessalonians should get 
 excited about it, should misunderstand the 
 
152 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 teaching they had received, and be open to 
 every kind of wild and unsetthng expectations 
 on the subject. In his Second Epistle, while 
 adverting to this state of things, it might have 
 been enough to tell them how mistaken they 
 had been in supposing that the time for 
 Christ's Second Coming had already arrived, 
 and that great events had to take place 
 before that event. But instead of that he is 
 led — no doubt by the inspiring Spirit — to 
 make so explicit a revelation of what events 
 the Church was to expect, that we must note 
 and comment on them in connection with his 
 other equally explicit prediction to Timothy. 
 
 The first great event to be looked for was 
 " the apostasy," but not that gradual decay in 
 the spiritual life and love of the early Churches, 
 which might have been expected, and is to be 
 seen at times in the Churches of our own day. 
 Besides that it is emphatically called "■the apos- 
 tasy," the descriptions given of it make it plain 
 that it was to be no ordinary " fallin g away ." 
 It was to be such an outbreak of cle rical 
 ambition as there was no conceivable field for 
 when the Christians in their little gatherings 
 called churches were a persecuted people, and 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 153 
 
 Christianity in the Empire a prohibited religion. 
 It supposes a state of things the reverse of all 
 this — Christianity and the Christian churches 
 in possession of full liberty, tke_jCJmrck an 
 organised body, and its ministers able to mount 
 to heights of assumption almost incredible, and 
 all this unopposed. Has this been realised ? 
 Let the known facts give the answer. Did not 
 the BishQ^__of_Rome at length claim to have 
 supreme authority in the Church of Christ, and 
 be the fountain of all ecclesiastical power — the 
 l^zcanui/iCArisl'Vtpoff- earth. ? And, instead of 
 this being resisted by his subordinates, and 
 in course of time becoming a dead letter, did 
 not the largest conclave of bishops that could 
 be assembled at Rome but a few years ago vote 
 the Pope, when he speaks ex cjxthedrd, to be, 
 in matters of doctrine, persondUyjinfallible — 
 his utterances in such cases being the vo ice of 
 God} Yes, this man is a king of kings; for 
 he wears a triple crown — the diadems of other 
 sovereigns not being distinctive enough for him. 
 If this does not come up to all that is here 
 predicted of " the man of sin," we may safely 
 say that the prediction will never be realised. 
 " Lawlessness," again, is a distinctive feature of 
 
154 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 this "man of sin." He is ''the lawless one" 
 — not so much, I think, that he disregards 
 laws, like rebels and traitors, but that he sets 
 himself above all law, except his own, which 
 he imposes upon his subjects (the office-bearers 
 and members of the Church) in daring oppo- 
 sition to the law of God. If it be asked how 
 he does this, I refer for answer to i Tim, iv. 
 
 '' Forbidding_^to marry!'' The reference 
 here is not to the mere creeping in of an 
 asc etic sp irit, that spurious spirituality which 
 consists in self-imposed mortification of the 
 flesh, and which any one acquainted with the 
 religious workings of the human mind might 
 predict as likely to arise in the Church. It is 
 this spirit organised into a system and zvorked 
 out by Church authority, in the specific form 
 of a prohibition of marriage. 
 
 Now, in point of fact, there is one, and 
 only one, such body existing. The Church 
 of Rome forbids clerical marriage, and holds 
 celibacy forth as a holier state of life, and 
 therefore the fitting thing for those who minister 
 in holy things. But He who made man said, 
 " It is not good for man to be alone," and 
 therefore He made woman. In some cases. 
 
Il'S PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 155 
 
 of course, a single life is best, and may become 
 a duty. But Divine authority we have for 
 saying that " marriage is honourable in all " 
 (Heb. xiii. 4). 
 
 Enforced celibacy cuts off a large and very 
 influential portion of society from social life. 
 To all the sympathies, the tenderness, the 
 exquisite delicacies which make the sweetness 
 of family life, they are, in personal experience, 
 entire strangers. And what must be the 
 effect of cutting them off from all this by a 
 law, but to drive them insensibly into a 
 penfold of their own order, and (by almost 
 necessary consequence) to make their own 
 interest, as an order, paramount with them, 
 and especially in all that tends to enrich the 
 Church ? When, in our Lord's time, some 
 pious Jew dedicated to the Temple part of his 
 means, but afterwards, when his means were 
 gone, and he became unable to support his 
 aged and destitute parents, he would wish 
 to withdraw part of his gift to the altar in 
 obedience to the higher law, the "scribes 
 and Pharisees, hypocrites," had but to utter 
 the word " Corban " (gifted), and though his 
 parents should starve, no matter, it could not 
 
156 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 be touched. " The Church," *' The Church," 
 their modern successors would say in such 
 cases. To such an extent, in fact, had this 
 grasping of money — all for the Church, no 
 doubt — proceeded, that our own as well as 
 other countries has been forced to interpose 
 by law, to prevent glaring injustice being 
 done in the name of religion. 
 
 Nor is this all. For as keepers of their 
 people's consciences (but who made them 
 such i^)— every one having his or her Father 
 Confessor — they have it in their power to 
 worm themselves into the most sacred and 
 delicate intercourses of family life and personal 
 character. No doubt it is possible to hear 
 confession with the highest sense of honour 
 and propriety, and many there are who, 
 fully alive to the demoralising tendency of 
 too searching inquiries, discharge what they 
 regard as a clerical duty with unexceptionable 
 propriety. But within the home circle of 
 every family there is much with which those 
 outside of it — whoever they are — have nothing, 
 and ought to have nothing, to do.* 
 
 * I once travelled in Ireland with an intelligent Roman 
 Catholic gentleman of property. Getting into conversation, and 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 157 
 
 But if in this case "the lawless one" has 
 presumed to traverse the Divine order of 
 human society, there is another way in which 
 more nakedly he does what the apostle 
 denounces. 
 
 Lastly, "commanding to abstain from meats, 
 which God created to be received with thanks- 
 giving." I refer, of course, to the "command" 
 to eat no fiesh meat on one day of the week. 
 Some, indeed, in all our Churches think that 
 on the day on which our Lord was crucified, 
 it would help to deepen their devotion to fast 
 during part of the day — say the three hours' 
 darkness — or to abstain from flesh meat on 
 that day (Friday). To me such self-imposed 
 mortification of the flesh is not like the 
 masculine character of the Apostle's teaching, 
 and what I venture to call the common-sense 
 style in which he here speaks of meats. But, 
 
 happening to agree in politics, more than either of us supposed, 
 I ventured to ask him whether — if we Protestant clergy, who 
 could marry or lead a single life as we pleased, were forced to 
 live a single life — he did not think that (human nature being 
 what it is) the effect would be to make the interests of our own 
 order paramount, in politics and everything else. "You have 
 touched our weakest point," he said. " It is the curse of our 
 Church ; but we daren't speak out." 
 
1 58 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 be this as it may, the thing which the " lawless 
 one" does is to '' command "^sliw^no.^ from" 
 flesh meat on Fridays — and this in the name 
 of religion, which religion consists in what 
 the Apostle here condemns.* 
 
 Returning now to 2 Thess. ii. 
 
 There is a mysterious, a studied caution in 
 the way in which the Apostle refers to "that 
 which restraineth the lawless one " from being 
 "revealed." "And now ye know that which 
 restraineth. For the mystery of lawlessness 
 doth already work : only [there is] one that 
 restraineth, until he be taken out of the way. 
 And then shall be revealed the lawless one." 
 Now, why all this hesitation in naming the 
 " one that restraineth " the revelation of that 
 dread Power ? The early fathers of the Church 
 all dreaded the approach of the Antichrist, as 
 they rightly judged that this lawless one would 
 be ; and if /j^ett^iis speaks for them, the one 
 obstacle to his appearance, was the existence 
 of an Empezor. But to speak that out nakedly 
 might be dangerous ; and therefore (he thinks) 
 
 * Of the defence of this law — that it is only for one day 
 in the week, and for the best of purposes — it is enough to say 
 that to continand it at all is what is hero condemned. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 159 
 
 It was that in the Apocalypse his name is con- 
 cealed in the numerical puzzle of "six hundred 
 sixty and six " (xiii. 18). 
 
 Whatever there may be in this conjecture, 
 certain it is that, until Imperial supremacy 
 ceased by the fall of the Empire, Ecclesiastical 
 supremacy— binding the separate sovereignties, 
 which were independent of each other, into the 
 one supremacy which they all recognised — was 
 impossible. The Empire fell in a. p. 476. And 
 as we have seen that almost from the accession 
 of Constantine (a.d. 312) as a Christian 
 emperor, the spiritual life of the Church 
 rapidly declined, it is not too much to say that 
 the rise of Antichrist had its springs then. 
 
 But even granting this (it may be said), 
 would it not throw the close of the 1 260 years 
 to a later period in the sixteenth century 
 than the rupture of the ChurcJi s unity by the 
 movement which Luther began ? To which it 
 is enough to reply, that the great breach was 
 a succession of ruptures. In some of the 
 countries— as Holland and Scotland — the breach 
 did not take place till nearly half a century 
 after Luther's movement. 
 
 But I confess I am not careful to meet this 
 
i6o THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 kind of objections. What force there is in them 
 I have myself once and again felt, and they 
 have driven me to a fresh examination of the 
 text, not once only. But finding that it would 
 not to me yield any conclusions but those I 
 here submit to the reader, I must leave the 
 decision to others. Precise dates I have no 
 skill in, and it well befits a mere A B C to 
 leave these alone. 
 
 One difficulty I must notice. If the 1260 
 years terminated so early as the Reformation 
 of the sixteenth century, does not that make the 
 pouring out of the Vials begin far too early, 
 and suppose them to require exhaustion before 
 this time ? But is it said that the one was 
 immediatelyjto follow the other ? Certainly not. 
 All that the text necessarily implies is, that the 
 Vial series would h^ the next cycle of_^ events, 
 the next stage in the march of the great events 
 here predicted. The language employed does, 
 indeed, seem to imply that, when the time, the 
 set time, arrives for the pouring out of xha Jii'st 
 of the vials of God's wrath upon this accursed 
 system, the rest may be expected to follow in 
 quick succession, until its final extinction. But 
 even that is not certain. Perhaps it may be 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. i6i 
 
 Otherwise. For who can tell but that after the 
 first great shock of the first " vial," the Papal 
 power may settle down and recover some of its 
 lost ground ? It did this, we know, when the 
 Protestant triumphs at the Reformation period, 
 begetting self-confidence, led their Churches to 
 be more intent on settling controversies amongst 
 themselves than on gaining fresh ground. 
 Such alternate rises and falls on the part of 
 the Papacy are quite consistent with a steady 
 ebbing out of the life and strength of the 
 system. But when the time appointed comes 
 — as come it will — then shall be brought to 
 pass what we find in the Vision of chap, xviii. 
 
 THE FALL OF BABYLON. 
 
 " After these things I saw another angel 
 coming down out of heaven, having great 
 authority ; and the earth was lightened with his 
 glory. And he cried with a mighty voice, 
 saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, 
 and is become a habitation of demons, and a 
 hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of 
 every unclean and hateful bird. For by the 
 wine of the wrath of her fornication all the 
 
 1 1 
 
1 62 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 nations are fallen* (probably as drunkards, 
 who cannot stand) ; and the kings of the 
 earth committed fornication with her, and the 
 merchants of the earth waxed rich by the 
 power of her wantonness" (xviii. i — 3). 
 
 It is a fine feature of this book that its 
 darkest scenes are lighted up with poetry of a 
 kind of its own, yet easily understood. What, 
 for example, can be grander than the opening 
 verses of this chapter ? And the loathsome- 
 ness of the fallen object, how could that be 
 more graphically described ? The figure is 
 taken from the description of the fall of Idumcca 
 (Isa. xxxiv. 14, 15), and especially Jeremiah's 
 description of the fall of Babylon (chap, li.), 
 the whole of which the reader should go care- 
 fully over afresh, in the light of the application 
 of its language here made to mystical Babylon, 
 
 SUMMONS TO GOD'S PEOPLE TO COME OUT OF 
 BABYLON BEFORE ITS FALL. 
 
 "And I heard another Voice from heaven, 
 saying. Come forth. My people, out of her. 
 
 Such is the reading of the best authorities. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 163 
 
 that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and 
 that ye receive not of her plagues " (xviii. 4). 
 
 Two things are obviously here : (i) that God 
 will have a people in Babylon, whom He calls 
 " My people," almost to the time of its fall ; (2) 
 that only by " coming out " of her will they be 
 held guiltless of her sins and be excepted from 
 her doom. (Even here the figure is taken 
 from a similar warning to flee out of literal 
 Babylon — Isa. Hi. 11; Jer. li. 9.) And just 
 as the Lord Jesus gave His disciples a sure 
 sign of the time for them to flee out of Jeru- 
 salem before its fall (Matt. xxiv. 15 — 18, Luke 
 xxi. 20 — 22), and they did as they were told, 
 and all escaped ; so there can be no doubt that 
 the actual escape from Babylon before its fall 
 of all that God regards as "My people" will 
 be seen to in that day. 
 
 And when we know how every Roman 
 Catholic is taught to believe that " out of the 
 Church there is no salvation," and that this 
 means out of the Church of Rome ; and how 
 even devout and intelligent Romanists can 
 hardly persuade themselves but that separation 
 from Rome means separation_from Christ — who 
 can wonder that many will be found of God's 
 
1 64 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 " people," till all but the very last ? Readers of 
 Church history know that such distinguished 
 theologians, scholars, and blameless Christians 
 as Cardinal Contarini and Cardinal Sadolet 
 were of one mind with Luther and Calvin on the 
 doctrine of justification and kindred truths, but 
 could not see their way to break with Rome. 
 And a clerical brother who travelled as tutor 
 to the son of a wealthy banker over almost 
 every city of Europe, and conversed with many 
 intelligent and excellent priests, told me that 
 many of them were genuine Protestants in all 
 but the name. 
 
 " For her sins have reached even unto 
 heaven, and God hath remembered her iniqui- 
 ties. Render unto her even as she rendered, 
 and double unto her the double according to 
 her works : in the cup which she mingled, 
 mingle unto her double. How much soever 
 she glorified herself, and waxed wanton, so 
 much give her of torment and mourning : for 
 she saith in her heart, I sit as a queen, and am 
 no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning." 
 This is an adaptation of Isa. xlvii. 8 — ii 
 regarding literal Babylon to its facsimile in 
 the mystical. "Therefore in one day shall her 
 
nS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 165 
 
 plagues come, death, and mourning, and famine; 
 and she shall be utterly burned with fire, for 
 strong is the Lord God which judged her " 
 (xviii. 4 — 8). ' 
 
 A DIRGE OVER THE FALL OF BABYLON. 
 
 This is an exquisite device — and there are 
 many such — of a book incomparable no less 
 for its songs of *' lamentation and mourning and 
 woe " than for its music of heaven. But it is 
 no part of my plan to take up the details of this 
 Lament. Three things, however, I must notice 
 in it. First, the stately szving of its music 
 (remarkably well brought out in our version). 
 Next, \\\2X pause in the midst of the wail, to tell 
 us (verse 21) how, like as the prophet Jeremiah 
 caused his servant to read to King Zedekiah 
 his prediction of the fall of Babylon, and then, 
 binding a stone to it, to cast it into the river 
 Euphrates, saying, "Thus shall Babylon sink, 
 and shall rise no more again" (Jer. li. 59 — 64), 
 so here "a strong angel took up a stone, as it 
 were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, 
 saying, Thus with a mighty fall shall Babylon, 
 the great city, be cast down, and shall be found 
 no more at all." Lastly, the wail is followed with 
 
i66 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 the bill of indictment against her, in which even 
 the blasphemies of this antichristian "beast" 
 have no place, but her protracted and accumu- 
 lated cruelties, as the great persecutor of all the 
 prophets and martyrs upon earth are held forth 
 to view : ''And in her zvas found the blood of 
 prophets, and of saints, and of all that have been 
 slain upon the earth " (verse 24). 
 
 HALLELUJAHS IN HEAVEN OVER THE FALL 
 OF BABYLON. 
 
 Chap. xix. 1—9. 
 
 " After these things I heard as it were a great 
 voice of a great earthquake, Hallelujah ! Salva- 
 tion, and glory, and power, belong to our God : 
 for true and righteous are His judgments; for 
 He hath judged the great harlot, which did 
 corrupt the earth with her fornication, and He 
 hath avenged the blood of His servants at her 
 hand (according to His promise to the martyrs 
 of the Pagan persecution, vi. 11). And a 
 second time they say, Hallelujah. And her 
 smoke goeth up for ever and ever. And the 
 four and twenty elders and the four living 
 creatures fell down and worshipped God that 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 167 
 
 sitteth on the throne, saying, Amen ; Hallelujah. 
 And a voice came forth from the throne, saying, 
 Give praise to our God, all ye His servants, 
 ye that fear Him, the small and the great. 
 And I heard as it were the voice of a great 
 multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and 
 as the voice of mighty thunders, saying. Halle- 
 lujah : for the Lord God, the Almighty reigneth. 
 Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let 
 us give glory unto Him : for the marriage of 
 the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made 
 herself. ready. And it was given unto her that 
 she should array herself in fine linen, bright and 
 pure : for the fine linen is the righteous acts 
 (StKatoj/xaTa, not hiKaioa'vvri) of the saints." 
 
 But what is this "marriage of the Lamb" 
 and " His wife" ? It is of some consequence 
 rightly to apprehend this. First of all, betrothal, 
 by the Jewish law, was legal marriage ; con- 
 sequently our Lord was the legal " son of 
 Joseph," though not his actual son. A touch- 
 ing allusion to this sense of marriage was on 
 one occasion made by the Baptist. Some tried 
 to make him jealous of his Master's popularity : 
 "You send disciples to him, and at this rate 
 you will soon have none of your own." "You 
 
l68 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 bring me good news," is his noble reply. " Ye 
 yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am 
 not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. 
 He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. But 
 the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and 
 heareth him, rejoiceth greatly, because of the 
 bridegroom's voice. This my joy therefore is 
 fulfilled : He must increase, but I must decrease." 
 Would ye have me step into my Master's 
 place ? The bride is not mine : why, then, 
 should the people stay with me ? Mine it is 
 to point them to Him. Enough for me to be 
 " the friend of the Bridegroom," sent to nego- 
 tiate the 7natchy bringing together the parties 
 to be wedded ; and if I may be privileged to 
 "stand and hear the Bridegroom's voice," and 
 witness the blessed espousals, I seek no more. 
 
 But the " marriage " here is a step in advance 
 of this. The espousals to which the Baptist 
 refers is that of which the Apostle says to the 
 Corinthians, that he did the same to them as 
 the Baptist did in his d^iy : "I espoused you 
 to one Husband" (2 Cor. xi. 2). But "the 
 marriage of the Lamb " here is considerably in 
 advance of this ; for the " fine linen " with which 
 the bride is "clothed" is "the righteous acts 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 169 
 
 of the saints " — or the steady fidelity to their 
 true Husband of the whole company of the 
 saints in the cloudy and dark day of bitter 
 persecution. 
 
 Yes, this is she whom we first met in xii. i, 
 in her fresh bridal beauty, newly "espoused to 
 one Husband," and now found true to Him, 
 through all the harlotry of the pretended 
 "spouse," and now owned and welcomed by 
 Him, ready to give birth to a fresh progeny 
 of saints, whom " He shall make princes in all 
 the earth" (Ps. xlv. 16). 
 
 " And he saith unto me. Write, Blessed are 
 they who are bidden to the marriage supper of 
 the Lamb," — " Happy they who shall witness 
 such a sight." " And he saith unto me, These 
 are the true words of God. And I fell down 
 before his feet to worship him." So transported 
 was the seer at this spectacle that he must have 
 been almost beside himself, to have been ready 
 to worship the angel who held it up to him. 
 But the rash act is speedily checked by a gentle 
 rebuke : the angel humbly letting him know 
 that he was on no higher level than himself — a 
 fellow-servant with him and all who hold the 
 testimony of Jesus ; and God alone he must 
 
I70 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 worship. What a damning rebuke does this 
 administer to that Church which not only directs 
 the same worship to creatures which the angel 
 forbade to be offered to any but God, but sets 
 up in defence of it a fantastic distinction between 
 a lawful worship called doulia, and latria, the 
 latter of which they reserve to God only ! 
 " For (adds the angel) the testimony of Jesus 
 is the spirit of prophecy " — " You are so trans- 
 ported at the spectacle I have held up to you, 
 that you forgot yourself But in this I have 
 been doing only a prophet's work, holding up 
 Him who is the burden of all prophecy." 
 
 THE LAST WAR, AND THE ROUT AND RUIN OF 
 THE PUBLIC ENEMIES OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 
 
 ClIAP. xix. II 2 1. 
 
 We have here at length the battle or "war 
 of Armageddon " (xvi. i6). 
 
 "And I saw the heaven opened ; and beheld 
 a white horse, and He that sat thereon, called 
 Faithful and True ; and in righteousness He 
 doth judge and make war. And His eyes 
 were a flame of fire (the fire of His jealousy for 
 the interests of His kingdom), and upon His 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 171 
 
 head sat many diadems (royal crowns) ; and 
 He hath a name written, which no one knoweth 
 but He Himself." (Compare His own words, 
 in Matt. xi. 27 — " No one knoweth the Son but 
 the Father ; neither doth any know the Father 
 save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
 willeth to reveal Him,") Here the sense 
 seems to be that in this name — known only to 
 Himself — are wrapt up all that He came to be 
 and do, as His Father's Servant, both for the 
 establishment of His kingdom among men, 
 and the condign punishment of all who dare 
 to oppose it. 
 
 "And He is arrayed in a garment sprinkled 
 with blood" — certainly not His own blood, but 
 the blood of His enemies. The whole idea 
 and the language is that of the prophet Isaiah, 
 where, in one of his grandest passages, he 
 depicts the fall of Idumcsa : " Who is this that 
 cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from 
 Bozrah ? . . . I that speak in righteousness, 
 mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in 
 thine apparel, and thy garments like him that 
 treadeth in the winefat ? I have trodden 
 the winepress alone. ... I trod them in mine 
 anger, and trampled them in my fury ; and 
 
172 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and 
 I have stained all my raiment " (Isa. Ixiii. i — 3). 
 
 "And His name is called The Word of 
 God.* 
 
 " And the armies which were in heaven 
 followed Him upon white horses, clothed in 
 fine linen, white and pure." So far as in the 
 syinbol the armies issued out of heaven, 
 following their celestial Leader, they were 
 " the principalities and powers in the heavenly 
 places." But since undoubtedly the war is one 
 fought here on earth, and in human flesh and 
 blood, the army that "followed" are the same 
 as in the explanatory chapter (xvii. 14) are 
 
 * The studiuiis reader slunild note two interesting Tacts about 
 the name here given to our Lord, (i) By none of the New 
 Testament writers save the author of the Fourth Gospel and that 
 of this book is this title as a proper natne given to Him (one of 
 the many proofs that the author of both books is the same). 
 (2) Even in the Fourth Gospel it never occurs in the narrative 
 part, but only in the prologue, to let the reader know, at the 
 outset, that He of whom it treats, though jna?!, of our own flesh 
 and blood, was no mere man, but co-eternal and co-essential 
 with God, and Himself God, who in the fulness of time " was 
 made flesh," which was given Him here to do. And when we 
 find this name reappearing here as a proper name of Him 
 who comes forth to execute " the judgment written" against the 
 enemies of His Kingdom among men, it is to express thereby 
 the mind of God. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 173 
 
 described as " they that are with Him (the 
 Lamb), called and chosen and faithful." 
 
 " And out of His mouth proceedeth a 
 sharp sword, that with it He should smite the 
 nations. And He shall rule them with a rod 
 of iron. And He treadeth the winepress of 
 the wrath of Almighty God." There is here a 
 combination of two kinds of power, the sword 
 of which Christ wields. The sword of power 
 to gain (by the truth brought home to them) 
 a luilling people in the day of His power " 
 (Ps. ex. 3).* These are the volunteers in this 
 war, on Christ's side — " They that are with 
 Him, the called and chosen and faithful." 
 But there is also the sword of power to 
 subdue the determined enemies of the truth, 
 " with a rod of iron." Probably it is to such 
 that the words of Ps. xlv. 3 — 5 are meant to 
 apply, though they may be delightfully applied 
 to the former class : — 
 
 " Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty 
 one, 
 
 * "Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of Thy 
 power : 
 In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of tlie morning, 
 Thou hast the dew of Thy youth." (R. V.) 
 
174 THE APOCALYPSE, 
 
 Thy glory and thy majesty. 
 
 And in thy majesty ride on prosperously, 
 
 Because of truth and meekness and right- 
 eousness : 
 
 And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible 
 things. 
 
 Thine arrows are sharp ; 
 
 The peoples fall under thee ; 
 
 They are in the heart of the king's enemies." 
 
 " And He hath on His garment and on 
 His thigh a name written, King of kings 
 AND Lord of lords." Hence verse ii, 
 "upon His head are many diadems." 
 
 Now for the issue. It is not told in an 
 impassioned prose, but in the stately style of 
 this prophecy throughout : — 
 
 " And I saw an angel standing in the sun 
 (in the gaze of the whole earth) ; and he cried 
 with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that 
 fly in mid heaven. Come and be gathered 
 together unto the great supper of God ; that 
 ye may eat the llesh of kings, and the flesh 
 of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and 
 the flesh of horses and of them that sit on 
 them, and the flesh of all men, both free and 
 bond, and small and great. And I saw the 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 175 
 
 beast, and the kings of the earth, and their 
 armies, gathered together to make war against 
 Him that sat upon the horse, and against His 
 army. And the beast was taken, and with 
 him the false prophet that wrought the signs 
 in his sight, wherewith he deceived them 
 that had received the mark of the beast, and 
 them that worshipped his image : they twain 
 were cast ahve into the lake of fire that 
 burneth with brimstone ; and the rest were 
 killed with the sword of Him that sat on the 
 horse, even the sword which came forth out 
 of His mouth.* And all the fowls were filled 
 with their flesh." 
 
 " These — " the rest " — probably mean the hangers-on, who 
 take no active part in the struggle, and perhaps little under- 
 stand the great quarrel, but, being found on the wrong side, 
 and an end made of their cause, are made to feel to their cost 
 that that cause was indeed not the cause of God. 
 
THE THOUSAND YEARS. 
 
 Chap. xx. i — lo. 
 
 SATAN BOUND. 
 
 "And I saw an angel coming clown out of 
 heaven, having the key of the abyss (Gr. 
 * bottomless deep ') and a great chain in his 
 hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the 
 old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, 
 and bound him for a thousand years, and cast 
 him into the abyss, and sealed it over him, 
 that he should deceive the nations no more, 
 until the thousand years should be fulfilled " 
 (xx 1—3). 
 
 So great diversity of opinion exists about 
 every feature of this famous period, that 1 
 will try to do justice to the language of every 
 clause of the text. 
 
 I. Is the "thousand years" to be taken as 
 a definite for an indefinite period ? I answer. 
 Certainly not : (i) because the contrary is 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 177 
 
 clearly implied in the announcement that his 
 confinement is limited to a fixed period, at the 
 close of which he is to be set at liberty ; and 
 (2) because this period is expressed, not at 
 all symbolically, like that other famous period 
 of the unbroken reign of Antichrist in three 
 different ways — " a thousand two hundred and 
 sixty days"; "forty and two months"; "a 
 time, and times, and half a time " — but nakedly 
 in " years." 
 
 2. What are we to understand by the 
 " deception " which the enemy is shut up 
 from practising for a thousand years ? Does 
 it mean that there will be a total cessation 
 of Satanic influence upon men for a thousand 
 years ? I answer. Certainly not. For (i) it 
 would be against the whole tenor of Scripture 
 teaching elsewhere ; and it is in the last degree 
 improbable that such a fact would be disclosed 
 only in a symbolical book of much difficulty. 
 (2) Since the purpose for which he is to be 
 confined is " that he should deceive the nations 
 no more " during that period — in other words, 
 that he should be able to create no public 
 interest, no hostile cause, to disturb the peaceful 
 reign of Christ. The stage had been succes- 
 
 12 
 
178 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 sively cleared of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and 
 at length of Rome (Pagan and Papal) ; and 
 there was to be an end of this struggle, even 
 though terminating always in the defeat of 
 the enemy. This is clearly the sense of the 
 prediction. And if after the thousand years 
 let loose again "for a little time," it is only 
 to reveal his unchanged enmity to Him 
 whose love, once forfeited, he can never 
 regain, and therefore will do his worst to 
 the last. 
 
 3. In what sense are we to understand the 
 seizure of the dragon, the chaining of him, 
 casting him down into the abyss and sealing it 
 over him ? Is it by an immediate putting forth 
 of the Divine Hand to arrest his action against 
 Christianity ? or is it a victory to be gained by 
 the heroic and united action of believing men 
 against the enemies of their Lord — truth in 
 them victorious over error ? This may seem 
 too weak an interpretation of the strong sym- 
 bolism employed. But is not the same style 
 of symbolism employed in previous chapters in 
 predicting the overthrow of Rome Papal ? In 
 view of this I ventured — in a book on the Second 
 Advent, published (ist edition) nearly fifty years 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 179 
 
 ago * — to express my belief that what is here 
 predicted of the shutting up of the dragon 
 would be effected, not by some exercise of 
 sovereign power to remove the enemy from, the 
 scene of conflict, on which he had been defeated 
 already, and so saving the Church from the 
 necessity of fighting him with its own " whole 
 armour of God " ; but that such would be the 
 victorious power of faith in the Church during 
 that happy period that, the cause of Christ 
 carrying it everywhere, none would be found 
 to stand up for Satan, his trade would be at 
 an end ; and none appearing for him, it would 
 be as if one should go in search of him, and 
 find him nowhere. 
 
 But now, at this late date, and looking at the 
 subject with a fresh eye, I am inclined to think 
 that, over and above all I said before, a number 
 of influences may co-operate to effect this 
 capture of the old serpent. The whole state 
 of society may be so changed as to afford no 
 base of operations for the enemy to work upon ; 
 while, on the part of the Church, everything 
 
 * "Christ's Second Coming: Will it be Premillennial ? " 
 Seventh edition. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
i8o THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 may be in its favour. And here, I think, we 
 may safely leave the matter. 
 
 the thousand years' reign with christ. 
 Chap. xx. 4. 
 
 " And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them 
 (or, they were sat upon) : and judgment was 
 given unto them (that sat upon them). And I 
 saw the souls of them that had been beheaded 
 for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word 
 of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, 
 neither his image, and received not the mark 
 upon their forehead and upon their hand ; and 
 they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand 
 years." 
 
 This has been the great field of controversy 
 between two sections of Christians from the 
 third century to the present day. Up to the 
 third century the persecuted Christians seem to 
 have taken this as predicting a literal resurrec- 
 tion of the martyrs to reign with Christ. Such 
 as demurred to this were called " allegorists " ; 
 but there is no evidence that they formed a 
 party, or had any open controversy with the 
 literalists, until, in the third century, Dionysius 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 
 
 of Alexandria, a disciple of Origen, went down 
 to Egypt to discuss the question with the 
 literalists or Chiliasts (" millenarians "), who 
 were warm advocates of the literal sense. 
 
 In modern times interpreters who reject the 
 literal sense seem to me to argue the question 
 on a false issue — I mean a misapprehension 
 of what the text says. It was not the sottls 
 that were seen that lived and reigned ; for 
 the souls were not slain. It was the martyrs 
 themselves that were seen living: aeain, and 
 reigning with Christ. And the one question is, 
 Is the prediction to be understood literally or 
 figuratively ? 
 
 Well, plainly, whether literal or figurative, it 
 is the martyrs onjy that are the subjects of *• tfwv^T^*'***^ 
 this prediction. Had the language been quite 
 general, there might have been room for some 
 latitude as to the party intended. But it is 
 quite the reverse. It is impossible for language 
 to be more definite. They are two distinct 
 sets of martyrs, 
 
 I. "Those who had beep beheaded for the 
 testimony of Jesus and for the word of God." 
 Now '• beheading " was a Roman mode of 
 execution — as we see in the case of John the 
 
1 82 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Baptist (Mark vi. 27, 28) ; and this word seems 
 used here expressly to intimate the authority 
 by which the martyrs here meant were put to 
 death. Besides, the ca7ise of their death is 
 expressed in the very terms used, by which the 
 writer of this book tells us why he was in the 
 isle of Patmos (i. 9), under a Pagan persecution. 
 And still more, in chap. vi. 9 — 11, we have the 
 very martyrs here described, crying from under 
 the altar for "judgment to be given them" 
 against those who slew them. The answer 
 there given them was that they should have 
 what they righteously claimed, but not until a 
 second crop of martyrs, to succeed them, should 
 be reaped ; and this is the class that next comes 
 before us in this vision, — described even more 
 unmistakably than the first ones. 
 
 2. "Those who worshipped not the beast 
 nor his image, nor had received the mark on 
 their forehead and in their hands." 
 
 None who have read the preceding chapters 
 of this book can mistake who are meant here ; 
 for by referring us back to chap. xiii. 4, 14 — 16, 
 and xix. 20, they tell us plainly that they are 
 that class of martyrs which was to succeed 
 those under Paganism : in other words, the 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 183 
 
 victims of the Papal antichrist. Of both these 
 classes it is here said that "judgment was 
 given unto them " — as promised in vi. 11. And 
 what is the "judgment" they get? "They 
 live, and reign with Christ a thousand years " — 
 not surely all the saints that have lived up to 
 that time, else why is this not said} If you 
 will have literal interpretation, you must go 
 through with it. 
 
 I have said that the early Christians who 
 took the prediction literally understood it of 
 the martyrs exclusively; insomuch that it begot 
 a fanatical desire of martyrdom, that they 
 "might have part in the first resurrection." 
 Even some of the modern advocates of the 
 literal sense have felt themselves obliged to 
 admit that it will be that of the martyrs only. 
 Others — feeling, no doubt, that a thousand 
 years' reign with Christ of martyrs only is not 
 likely to be the thing intended — are fain to 
 include such as have been virtual martyrs, such 
 as eminent confessors (so Bp. Newton). But 
 without enlarging on this here, I must refer 
 the reader to my book on the " Second 
 Coming," where (in chap, ix.) he will find, in 
 fuller detail than he is likely to find else- 
 
1 84 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 where, the various opinions of literalists on this 
 point. 
 
 But at the present day I know of no inter- 
 preter of the Literalist School who does not 
 extend " the first resurrection to all the saints " 
 at His coming."* And what ought to surprise 
 us is, that they seem to take this for granted, 
 reasoning out the whole plan of the thousand 
 years' reign, as if the " first resurrection " of 
 all believers were the obvious sense of the 
 prediction. But this will not go down with 
 
 * In his masterly " Commentary on the First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians" (1885), the Rev. Principal Edwards, when com- 
 menting on chap. xv. 26, writes with less than his usual cautious 
 accuracy. After saying : '• It seems, it must be confessed, that 
 the apostle teaches that there will be two restirrcctions — the 
 former of believers only ; the latter of all others, when at last 
 'death itself shall die:' the first resurrection is the redemption 
 of the body, for which all believers groan (Rom. viii. 23)," — Dr. 
 Edwards adds : " Similarly the apostle John says that the fol- 
 lowers of Jesus — not the martyrs only ; for Km o\ rti'ff (' and such 
 as ') introduces others — will rise and reign with Christ a thousand 
 years. And this is the first resurrection. But the rest of the 
 dead will not rise till the thousand years are ended " (pp. 417-18). 
 That the saints will rise before the wicked is beyond doubt true. 
 But the apostle John does not say that " tlie followers of Jesus 
 (not the martyrs only) will rise and reign with Christ a thousand 
 years." It is Dr. Edwards only who makes liim say that. The 
 apostle says tliat those who were beheaded will rise ; and the 
 next clause does indeed "introduce others," but it is another class 
 of ma7'tyrs, it is martyrs only, of whom Rev. xx. 3, 4, speaks, and I 
 must insist on not loose but exact interpretation. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 185 
 
 exact interpreters, who will insist that if re- 
 quired to believe the first resurrection is to 
 be a literal one, the party that is to rise must 
 be taken with the same literality. 
 
 I admit that when one reads the two verses 
 that follow, the literal sense of them seems 
 more natural than the figurative. But since 
 this is confessedly a symbolical book, ought 
 not its own symbolical predictions elsewhere 
 to guide us in the interpretation of this one ? 
 Can anything express more literally the killing 
 of the two witnesses (xi.), the exposure of 
 their dead bodies for three days and a half in 
 the streets of the great city, their resurrection 
 after that, and ascension into heaven ? (See 
 the remarks on this in the preceding pages.) 
 
 But why go about to prove from Scripture 
 that life from the dead is familiar to us in 
 every form of the idea? Is it not current coin 
 in every language and every age ? A striking 
 illustration of this way of speaking, when no 
 literal resurrection of the dead is meant, is 
 recorded of John Huss, when in prison at 
 Constance awaiting his execution : — 
 
 " When the venerable priest (says Merle d'Aubigne) 
 had been summoned by Sigismund's (the Emperor's) 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 order before the Council of Constance, and had been 
 thrown into prison, the chapel of Bethlehem, in which 
 he had proclaimed the Gospel and the future triumphs 
 of Christ, occupied his mind much more than his own 
 defence. One night the holy martyr saw in imagina- 
 tion from the depths of his dungeon the pictures of 
 Christ that he had painted on the walls of his oratory 
 effaced by the Pope and his bishops. This vision dis- 
 tressed him ; but on the next day he saw many painters 
 occupied in restoring these figures in greater number 
 and in brighter colours. As soon as their task was 
 ended, the painters, who were surrounded by an 
 immense crowd, exclaimed, ' Now let the Pope and 
 bishops come, they will never efface them more.' 'And 
 many people rejoiced in Bethlehem, and I with them,' 
 said John Huss. ' Busy yourself with your defence, 
 rather than with your dreams,' said his faithful friend the 
 Knight of Chlum, to whom he had communicated the 
 vision. ' I am no dreamer,' said Huss, ' but 1 main- 
 tain that the image of Christ will never be effaced, but 
 it will be painted afresh in all hearts by much better 
 painters than myself. The nation that loves Christ 
 will rejoice in this ; and I, awaking from among the 
 
 DEAD, and rising, AS IT WERE FROM THE GRAVE, SHALL 
 LIVE WITH GREAT JOY.' "* 
 
 But, after all, I confess that, with me, the 
 conclusive argument against the literal sense of 
 this prediction — viewing it as the resurrection 
 
 * "History of the Reformation in the Sixtccntli Ccntnry," 
 vol. i., p. 23. (Oliver & Boyd: Edinburgh, 1846.) 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 187 
 
 of all the saints that have lived before the 
 second coming of Christ, and the thousand 
 years' reign to succeed that — is the theory of 
 w/ia/ the state of things will then be, which we 
 are asked to accept. 
 
 1. "The dead in Christ will rise first, and 
 all in Christ that are found alive at His coming 
 ("their mortality being swallowed up in life") 
 will be caught up together with them in the 
 clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so 
 shall they ever be with the Lord" (i Thess. 
 iv. 16, 17). This is heaven — the state of 
 glory — the saints, there with Christ, in glorified 
 bodies. 
 
 Modifications of this (as the secret rapture 
 and the leaving behind of the unready for a 
 limited period) I touch not, confining myself 
 to the essentials of the theory. 
 
 2. There will then be left on earth a whole 
 hunian race, in mortal flesh and blood, as now, 
 for a thousand years. What will be their con- 
 dition ? They will have to be made Chris- 
 tians — that is to say, believing in God and in 
 Jesus Christ. But what their faith and hope 
 will rest upon it is impossible to conceive. 
 For if oiiT Scripture is their only revelation. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 what can they get out of it ? Christ's Second 
 Coming is the hope of the Church now, but 
 after that is past there is no third Coming that 
 they can look for. Nor can they tell what will 
 become of them when they die. They have 
 no Scripture to assure them that they will rise 
 again ; nor if they do, in what state and to 
 what futurity. For all that relates to saints 
 in Scripture has to do only with those who 
 have lived before the Second Advent. Accord- 
 ingly, some (as the late excellent Edward 
 Bickersteth) go the length of believing that 
 the earth will be peopled by a race of men 
 in mortal flesh and blood, marrying and giving 
 in marriage, as now, for ever. Others, not 
 prepared for that, suppose the saints on earth 
 after Christ's coming will have a resurrection 
 from the dead, and to life everlasting, but 
 on a lower plane than that of the glory of 
 the heavenly state, and not "with Christ" 
 (probably) so immediately. 
 
 But what is all this, but mere speculation, 
 based upon nothing in Scripture where the foot 
 can stand } So obvious is this, that some 
 expect a new revelation for their behoof. But 
 this also is pure conjecture. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 189 
 
 Now, what answer do we get to all this ? 
 Just no answer at all — except that these are 
 things which we have no need to trouble our- 
 selves about ; that " the day will declare it." 
 Well, there are many things about the future 
 on which we should desire light, but on which 
 Scripture gives none — such as whether and 
 to what extent there will be a recognition of 
 each other by souls in heaven, of what nature 
 the " many mansions " will be, whether there 
 will be diversified occupations as well as dif- 
 ferent degrees of nearness to the throne ; also 
 whether Christ will be seen in human form, 
 and as such will hold fellowship with them. 
 On all such questions Scripture is silent, and 
 it is good for us to be content to wait for 
 light on them till the time come. 
 
 But what the literal " first resurrection," as 
 now understood in connection with the pre- 
 millennial theory of Christ's Second Coming, 
 leaves absolutely in the dark, is of a totally 
 different nature, and we refuse to be put off. 
 When you tell us of a human race to people 
 the earth for a thousand years after Christ at 
 His Second Coming has taken up with Him 
 to glory all the saints that have lived before 
 
igo THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 that time, we have a right to demand some 
 answer to such questions as I have named, 
 about the race you speak of, — how they are to 
 be converted, what is to be their faith and hope 
 — in fact, whether their saintship will be the 
 same as ours, and what their hopes for the 
 future. If all the answer they have to give is 
 to give it the go-by, I hold it fatal to the 
 whole theory. In short, for myself, I must 
 set aside my New Testament before I can 
 believe in it. I said this fifty years ago ; and 
 it is to me more incredible now, if that be 
 possible, than it was then. 
 
 But if " the first resurrection " is not to be a 
 literal one, how are we to conceive of it figura- 
 tively ? The answer to this question is to be 
 found in the fact that it is the martyrs only who 
 are said to rise — those under the Pagan and the 
 Papal persecutions. And just as it is said of 
 Abel, that his blood cried unto God from the 
 ground, and that "he being dead yet speaketh"; 
 and just as John Huss was certain that his 
 testimony for Christ, though slain in his person, 
 would rise to life in others who would be 
 " better preachers than he," so the witness 
 borne by that noble army of martyrs, for 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 191 
 
 Christianity against Paganism, and for Christ 
 against Antichrist, would rise and triumph and 
 be no more disturbed for a thousand years. 
 
 To expatiate here on what will then be 
 witnessed would be unsuitable in this ABC. 
 In my book on the Second Advent I did my 
 best to point out, in the light of Scripture, what 
 would be its leading features (chap, viii., Part II.), 
 and to this I refer the reader. One thing, 
 however, is clear: that "blessed and holy " must 
 he be " who shall have part in this first resur- 
 rection," and " over them " it is certain that 
 " the second death shall have no power " — for 
 that is a death that will never die — but " they 
 shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall 
 reign with Him a thousand years." 
 
 THE REST OF THE DEAD. 
 
 " The rest of the dead lived not again till 
 the thousand years should be finished" (ver. 5). 
 But what happened ^/len ? Did they " live 
 again " {literally on the thousand years being 
 finished) ? Not a word of this do we read. 
 But if the sense is figurative, we see them here 
 alive, and ready tools of the serpent when again 
 
192 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 let loose. He was shut up that he might 
 deceive the nations no more for a thousand 
 years. But, this long period ended, he is 
 " loosed out of his prison," and finds " nations " 
 enough prepared to do his old work. This 
 is to me another clear proof that the whole 
 language of the prediction is to be understood 
 in a figurative sense. 
 
 " And when the thousand years are finished 
 Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and 
 shall come forth to deceive the nations which 
 are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and 
 Magog, to gather them together to the war, 
 the number of whom is as the sand of the 
 sea " (ver. 8). Let us look at this statement 
 first in the figurative and then in the literal 
 sense. 
 
 To Christians whose lot is cast within the 
 bright latter day, it must be a joy to live, — 
 religion is uppermost everywhere and in every- 
 thing, — in public affairs, business transactions, 
 in social intercourse, in family life ; worldliness 
 quite out of fashion, and the ungodly nowhere 
 to be seen, or obliged to " feign submission " : 
 a " heaven upon earth," and this for a thousand 
 years ! 
 
/TS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 193 
 
 "But the sun of this bright day is destined to set — 
 gradually, no doubt, as gradually it will rise, subject to 
 the laws of spiritual decline. . . . Everything may go 
 on as before, but without the 'first love,' with the 
 mechanism of habit, and lingering recollections of the 
 past. By this the jealous Lord of the Church will 
 be touched, and His Spirit be grieved, whose with- 
 drawal will accelerate the decline. . . . Settling upon 
 her lees, and her outward prosperity proving a snare 
 to her, secularity taking the place of spirituality, and 
 inconsistencies appearing increasingly, the Church's 
 influence for good upon the world at large will grow 
 less and less. And just as on a small scale in some 
 little community like Northampton, as described by 
 President Edwards,* after the remarkable sense of 
 God's presence over the whole town had begun to 
 wax feeble, the still unconverted portion of it, though 
 subdued and seemingly won over to Christ, would by 
 little and little recover themselves, and at length venture 
 forth in their true character, — so will it probably be on 
 a vast scale at the close of the latter day. The uncon- 
 verted portion of the world, long constrained by the 
 religious influences surrounding them, to fall in with 
 the spirit of the day, catching some of its wholesome 
 impulses, but never coming savingly under its power — 
 this portion of mankind, which we have reason to 
 believe will not be small, will now be freed from these 
 irksome restraints, no longer obliged to breathe an 
 atmosphere uncongenial to their natui e, and ' feign 
 
 * See " Second Advent," p. 404. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 submission.' . , . And then the Lord will be provoked 
 to let loose upon them the roaring lion." * 
 
 Such is an intelligible, and, I humbly think, a 
 reasonable view of the prediction, when taken 
 in a figurative sense. But now try the literal 
 sense of it, and I hesitate not to say it is 
 absolutely unintelligible. For where did those 
 myriads of " nations " come from, whom Satan, 
 as soon as he is " loosed from his prison," finds 
 all ready to be " deceived," — that cloud of 
 locusts to eat up the Church of Christ ? Since 
 all the saints that have lived before the thousand 
 years and the Second Coming of Christ, are 
 supposed to have risen from the dead to reign 
 with Christ, and " the rest of the dead lived not 
 again till the thousand years were finished," did 
 they rise from the dead then! It is not said 
 that they did, but we must presume that they 
 did so, if we are to interpret literally. Is it 
 they, then, that are the "nations" whom Satan 
 ** gathered together against Christ " — men risen 
 from the dead, in resurrection-bodies, to war 
 on earth against the Church ? Will this be 
 credited by anybody ? But if not, tlie literal 
 sense will not do. 
 
 * "Clirist's Sccoinl Coining," etc., pp. 414-15- 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 195 
 
 SATAN'S LAST EFFORT AND FINAL DEFEAT. 
 
 " And they went up over the breadth of the 
 earth, and they compassed the camp of the 
 saints round about and the beloved city " (ver. 9). 
 The Church is supposed to be encamped in the 
 wilderness, and " the beloved city " — the city of 
 the great King, their capital. And the names 
 given to the " nations " that are " gathered " 
 by Satan against Christ, " Gog and Magog," 
 carry us back to that unprovoked, formidable, 
 but abortive attack upon the people of Israel, 
 after they were re-settled in their own land 
 (Ezek. xxxviii., xxxix.). 
 
 Whatever this may mean, it is not to be 
 supposed that it will begin and end all at once. 
 "The little time" during which Satan is "loosed 
 from his prison " must be read as " little " 
 relatively to the thousand years of his imprison- 
 ment ; and so it may extend through a century 
 or two, for aught we can tell. "Since it cannot 
 be imagined (says Fader ^) that the whole 
 world will plunge at once from piety into 
 impiety, both common sense and general expe- 
 
 * " Sacred Calendar of Prophecy," iii., p. 478. 
 
196 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 rience may teach us that a considerable time 
 will elapse ere the children of men will become 
 so thoroughly depraved as to enter into a 
 regular combination for the purpose of extir- 
 pating the small remnant of God's faithful 
 people." The names " Gog and Magog," to 
 express " the nations " that thus combine, refer 
 back to those who after the re-settlement of 
 Israel securely in their own land, made a 
 formidable but abortive attack upon them 
 (Ezek. xxxviii., xxxix.). 
 
 Thus surrounded by overpowering numbers, 
 ready to burst in upon and make an end of 
 them, one naturally asks what was to be done 
 by the faithful ? I suppose something like 
 what faithful Hezekiah and his people did, 
 when Jerusalem was invested by an army suffi- 
 cient to overwhelm them, — they lifted up their 
 prayer for the remnant that was left, saying, 
 , " This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, 
 and of blasphemy ; for the children are come 
 to the birth, and there is not strength to bring 
 forth. . . , Incline thine ear, O Lord, and hear ; 
 open thine eyes, O Lord, and see ; and hear 
 the words of Rabshakeh, which hath sent to 
 reproach the living God" (Isa. xxxvii. 3, 17). 
 
i 
 
 ITS PRIMAR\ PREDICTIONS. 197 
 
 Their tremulous cries enter into the ears of 
 the Lord of Sabaoth. ** And shall not God 
 avenge His own elect, who cry unto Him day 
 and night ? I say unto you, He will avenge 
 them speedily" (Luke xvii. 7, 8). And just as 
 " when the sun rose upon the earth when Lot 
 entered Zoar, the Lord rained upon Sodom 
 and upon Gomorrha brimstone and fire from 
 the Lord out of heaven" (Gen. xix. 23, 24), 
 so when the final attack upon the Church of 
 Christ and cause of God seems ready to crush 
 it out of existence, " fire came down out of 
 heaven and devoured them. And the devil 
 that deceived them was cast into the lake of 
 fire and brimstone, where are also the beast 
 and the false prophet : and they shall be 
 tormented day and night for ever and ever " 
 (vers. 9, 10). 
 
THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 Chap. xx. 1 1 — 15. 
 
 "And I saw a great white throne, and Him 
 that sat upon it, from Whose face the earth and 
 the heaven fled away, and there was found no 
 place for them. And I saw the dead, the great 
 and the small, standing before the throne : and 
 books were opened, and another book was 
 opened, which is the book of life. And the 
 dead were judged out of those things which 
 were written in the books, according to their 
 works. And the sea gave up the dead which 
 were in it, and death and Hades gave up the 
 dead which were in them. And they were 
 judged, every man according to their works. 
 And death and Hades were cast into the lake 
 of fire. This is the second death, even the 
 lake of fire. And if any was not found written 
 in the book of life, he was cast into the lake 
 of fire." 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 199 
 
 " If ever language could express the doctrine of a 
 simultaneous and universal resurrection of the dead, 
 surely we have it here. Who that credits what is here 
 stated could ever imagine that all mankind were not in 
 this august scene, in their resurrection state, and that 
 himself would not form part of it ? But premillen- 
 nialists see none but the wicked here, and even of them 
 only such as have died before the millennium." * The 
 early premillennialists never dreamt of such a thing ; 
 but the necessities of the theory, as now held, rendered 
 it certain it must come to this ; and hard work they 
 have of it to make their interpretation in the least 
 plausible.! The whole scene so speaks for itself that I 
 will only call attention to its principal features. 
 
 The scene opens with surpassing majesty. The 
 great throne is " white " in the spotless purity of the 
 Judge and the unerring rectitude of His judgments. 
 The lustre of His face is so appalling that the earth 
 and the heaven at the sight of it fled out of existence ! 
 But the dead, small and great, have to face it ; for they 
 are there each one to be judged according to his works. 
 For this purpose, " books were opened, and the dead were 
 judged out of those things which were written in the 
 books, according to their works." This done, and each 
 case already decided, " another book was opened, which 
 is the book of life." We have seen already what this 
 ** other book " is. It is a book not of " works " ; for these 
 are contained in " the books " which have been already 
 produced and told their tale. It is a book of names — 
 
 * "Second Coming," etc. (7th ed.), p. 195. 
 t See the extracts in the place just quoted. 
 
200 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 " written from the foundation of the world in the boolc of 
 life of the Lamb that hath been slain " (xiii. 8 ; xvii. 8). 
 For what purpose is this " other book " opened ? 
 Doubtless to shew that " known unto God are all His 
 works from the beginning of the world " (Acts xv. i8) ; 
 and that " whom He foreordaineth them He also calleth, 
 and whom He calleth them He also justifieth, and 
 whom He justifieth them He also glorifieth " (Rom, 
 viii. 29) ; yet that each one of these has to pass the 
 judgment according to his works, and that if he is 
 adjudged to life, it is not because his name has been 
 written from the foundation of the world in the book of 
 life, but because " his works do follow him." The " other 
 book " simply countersigns the judgment already passed, 
 " according to the things that were written in the 
 books." 
 
 THE LAST THINGS. 
 
 Chaps, xxi., xxii. 
 
 It is not within the scope of my plan, in this 
 A B C of the Apocalypse, to take up in detail 
 these closing chapters. That they follow, in 
 point of time, the Last Judgment (chap, xx.), 
 is to me quite clear. It is true that we read 
 (chap. xxi. 24, 26, and xxii. 2), that " the 
 nations" shall walk in (or "by") the light of 
 " the New Jerusalem," and that " the kings of 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 2ol 
 
 the earth do bring their glory into it" — as if 
 they themselves had no part in it ; also, that 
 the leaves of the " tree of life were for the 
 healing of the nations " — implying, apparently, 
 that after the redeemed have entered into 
 glory there will be in " the new heavens and 
 the new earth," " nations " as such, with their 
 "■ kings ^' still in flesh and blood. Accordingly, 
 those who believe that the Second Advent 
 will be premillennial, hold this to be conclusive 
 evidence that the two last chapters of the 
 Apocalypse belong to the Thousand Years. In 
 that case, it follows that the final condition of 
 the human race is not revealed at all. But few 
 devout *and unprejudiced students of the New 
 Testament will believe this. I admit the 
 difficulty of otherwise explaining the verses 
 which I have quoted. But the difficulties of 
 the other theory are immensely greater, and 
 (as I have shown elsewhere) involve what is 
 self-contradictory. 
 
202 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 On a survey of the contents of this volume, 
 one or two concluding remarks may not 
 be unacceptable to its readers. 
 
 I. What I believe I have made good by 
 strict exegesis of the text, I have expressed 
 confidently, (i) If in the Apocalypse there is 
 ovi^ fixed quantity (to speak algebraically) — one 
 prediction on which we can plant our foot as 
 sure ground — it is that of chap. vi. lo, ii — 
 that there were to be two protracted periods of 
 cruel 7nartyrdom of the saints and faithful in 
 Christ Jesus, — the one by Pagan Rome, the 
 other, in succession to it, by Papal Rome ; also, 
 that in chap. xx. 4, both these companies 0/ 
 martyrs were beheld by the Seer living again 
 and reigning with Christ for a thousand years 
 — in the triumph of what they died for, in their 
 successors. But there are not a few details — 
 some of them of much importance — of which I 
 could only give what appears to me to be the 
 thing intended. This distinction I hope will be 
 borne in mind. Indeed, some details I do not 
 see my way to at all, and therefore I meddle 
 not with them. The .most important of these 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 203 
 
 details are those of the Trumpet Series, chap, 
 viii. 7 — ix. Two things about this Series I 
 spoke confidently about : that they were a 
 succession o{ judgments on some interest hostile 
 to Christ ; and that this interest was Papal 
 Christendom. The evidence for this the reader 
 will find in pp. 104-126.* But the details of each 
 successive judgment, in this Trumpet-Septenary, 
 I leave to other and better interpreters. 
 
 2. In no other bodk of the Bible do we find 
 such threatenings against any one who shall 
 dare to tamper with its contents, by either 
 
 * In confirmation of this, I here add what I should there have 
 begun with. Tliese judgments were brought down upon the 
 Iiostile interest in answer to the prayers of all the saints. For 
 the angel who offered these prayers — "adding much incense" 
 to them, as the symbol of how acceptable they were to tlie 
 Hearer of prayer (compare Ps. cxli. 2) — took the censer, from 
 which the incense ascended, and filled it with the fire of the 
 altar, and cast it upon the earth, and there followed thunder and 
 voices and lightnings and an earthquake " (viii. 3 — 5), whereupon 
 the judgments, one by one, are announced, to the last. And 
 what are these " prayers of all the saints " ? They correspond 
 to the "cry " from under the altar of the souls that had been slain 
 under the Pagan persecutions. They asked how long would 
 their " Master " delay to " avenge their blood on them that dwell 
 on the earth " ? and they were told they would have to wait till 
 another crop of martyrs, to succeed them, should be reaped 
 (chap. vi. 10, 11). And these "prayers of all the saints" are 
 the cry of the martyrs of Papal Christendom for the avenging 
 of their blood. 
 
204 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 adding to or taking away from " the things that 
 are written in this book." To him who shall 
 addio them, " God will add the plagues written 
 in this book." From him who takes away from 
 them " God will take his part out of the book of 
 life, and out of the holy city, and of the things 
 that are written in this book."* Whatever this 
 may import, one thing at least may be said of 
 it : that to neglect altogether " the prophecy 
 of this book " — to take no pains to understand 
 what it was meant to teach — is not the way 
 to avert this threatening ; much less to make 
 a boast of passing it by as a hopeless study, 
 and look down upon those who waste their 
 time upon it. 
 
 3. It will surprise many, perhaps most 
 readers of the Apocalypse, to be told that, 
 though it is *'the book of the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ," His Second Coming — as to either the 
 time or the manner of it — is not within the 
 limits of its predicted future : I mean the strictly 
 prophetical part of the book (from chap. iv. to 
 xxii. 6 inclusive). In what goes before this 
 
 * I advisedly adhere to the received text here and the A.V., 
 as against the R.V. — both on internal grounds and the textual 
 evidence. But I cannot stay to make this good. 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 205 
 
 it comes out abundantly. Even in the Saluta- 
 tion the Seer breaks forth in rapturous strains, 
 " Behold, He cometh with the clouds, and every 
 eye shall see Him." To the church of Thya- 
 tira the glorified Head of all the churches says, 
 " That which ye have, hold fast till I come." 
 In fact, every promise " to him that over- 
 cometh" in the seven churches points to and 
 presupposes His Second Coming as the time 
 when they will be all realised. 
 
 So much for what precedes the strictly pro- 
 phetic part of the book. But in the strictly 
 prophetic part of the book (chap. iv. — xxii. 6) 
 not a word is said even about the fact, that 
 He will come, nor any indication of when — 
 relatively to the other events there predicted 
 — His coming will take place. To point to 
 the words in chap. xvi. 15, " Behold I come as 
 a thief: blessed is he that watcheth," proves 
 nothing ; for over and over again these warnings 
 are given to prepare for portentous events 
 manifestly short of His Second Coming, and 
 in each case the connexion must determine 
 the event referred to. That chap. xix. 11, 
 etc., announces the Second Coming of Christ 
 will hardly be affirmed by those who observe 
 
2o6 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 what is said to follow the events there pre- 
 dicted. 
 
 What I say, then, is, that the bright hope 
 that He "will appear the Second time, without 
 sin, unto the salvation of them that look for 
 Him " is not once even alluded to within the 
 strictly predictive part of this " book of the 
 revelation of JesiLS Christ ^ But no sooner 
 does this end, in chap. xxii. 6, than the Master 
 Himself takes speech in hand, and in verse 7 
 — as if impatient to get the reader out of 
 all that sort of thing — breaks forth, " Be- 
 hold, I come quickly : Blessed is he that 
 keepeth the words of the prophecy of this 
 book " (now completed). All that follows is 
 supplementary — a rich winding-up of a book 
 which, sui generis, is incomparable. But in 
 the heart of it again He says, " Behold, I come 
 quickly"; and at the close, *'He which testifieth 
 these things saith. Yea, I come quickly. Amen." 
 "Yea, come. Lord Jesus," is the glad response 
 of the writer, and of all who love His name ! 
 
 Now, what do we gather from this studious 
 absence from all the chronological predictions of 
 this book, of any allusion to what is of infinitely 
 greater importance to every Christian than any 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 207 
 
 of the predictions which have been the chief 
 subject of this volume- — the Second Coming of 
 Him whose words are graven upon His heart, 
 and almost ever on His lips, — " I go to prepare 
 a place for you, and if I go and prepare a 
 place for you, I will come again and receive 
 you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye 
 may be also"? It is because this Coming is 
 of a perfectly different character from all 
 "■comings^' either '■'quickly'' or '• as a thief" 
 in the strictly prophetic part of this book — not 
 to say in the prophecy of our Lord in Matt. 
 xxiv. and Luke xix., in which His " coming with 
 the clouds of heaven with power and great 
 glory " is studiously expressed in the language 
 of His Personal Advent; though Matt. xxiv. 34 
 makes it perfectly clear that the event predicted 
 was the destruction of Jerusalem, the breaking 
 up of the Jewish State, and the dispersion of 
 the Jews among all nations. And the reason is 
 plain. Nations or public bodies can only be 
 judged and sentenced to perish in the present 
 world. But when they are so, it is their 
 Judgment Day ; and it is fitting it should be 
 expressed as such, in order that we, in these 
 later days, should read, in that phraseology , 
 
2o8 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 what will be to us " the judgment of the 
 great day." 
 
 But let any one read how the Second 
 Personal Coming of Christ is expressed in 
 those portions of the New Testament which 
 are of a non-predictive character, and he will 
 at once recognise the difference I wish to point 
 out and insist on. 
 
 Yes, that bright day which has been the 
 hope of the Church in every age, is not a 
 question o{ figures, but of faith. It was "at 
 hand" in the apostles' day ; it is at hand to-day, 
 and in the same sense ; and if He should not 
 come for a thousand years more, it will still 
 be "at hand," and in the very same sense. 
 Chronologically, this was not true in the 
 apostles' day, nor for more than a millennium 
 after. But no matter. He will come, says the 
 expectant Christian, when He is ready to come, 
 and I am ready when He is. And faith sees 
 Him coming, " leaping upon the mountains and 
 skipping upon the hills." And neither in the 
 spirit of sloth and carnality, does it say, " My 
 Lord delayeth His coming," nor in the spirit 
 of fanatical and excited expectation about 
 a present appearance, but in that sublime 
 
ITS PRIMARY PREDICTIONS. 209 
 
 attitude which the apostle calls " the patience 
 of hope," it is the privilege of faith to say — alike 
 when chronologically near, as in holy defiance of 
 mere dates, because ready for them all alike — 
 "Make haste, my Beloved, and be Thou like to 
 a roe, or to a young hart upon the mountains of 
 spices" (Cant. viii. 14).* 
 
 * "Christ's Second Coming," etc. (7th Ed.), page 51. 
 
 14 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 I. 
 
 [When commenting on chap. xii. 6, 14, I reserved 
 what I had to say about the question Where is 
 this " wilderness " to which " the woman fled from 
 the face of the serpent " ? But not being satisfied 
 as to the proper place for inserting what I wrote 
 on this point, it escaped my memory altogether. 
 And as the question is one of some interest, I 
 supply it here.] 
 
 But zokere is this " wilderness " ? it will be 
 asked. Most interpreters reply, In the valleys 
 of the south of France and Savoy, Dmiphiny, 
 Provence, and the High Alps. And thither, 
 beyond doubt, a large body of the faithful 
 fled for refuge from the bloodhounds of the 
 Church. There for a long time they were left un- 
 disturbed. For an utter indifference to religion 
 reigned there, amid the luxury and laxity of 
 morals in which the court and wealthy nobility 
 spent their lives ; while the people were equally 
 lax in their own — neglected by the clergy, whose 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 own lives were a disgrace to religion. Taking 
 advantage of this, the refugees began quietly 
 to insinuate into the families of the people 
 those saving truths for which they had had to 
 fly. Some went among them as preachers, but 
 others with more success as pack merchants, 
 selling jewellery and other such articles, but 
 with New Testaments and religious books 
 secreted in their baggage. Having once gained 
 the ear of a family, and awakened their curi- 
 osity — by telling them of priceless jewels which 
 they possessed but could not sell — they would 
 be asked to show them, and after some hesi- 
 tation would cautiously open their treasures, 
 and, refusing all offers to purchase them, agree 
 to give them for nothing, on a promise not to 
 betray them. In this way converts of whole 
 families were rapidly made, until the whole 
 region seemed to swarm with " heretics." 
 
 That this is no exaggeration we have the 
 best of all evidence, from one who had been 
 himself a leading man among the Waldenses — 
 Reinerius Sac ho or Sacco — but who turned his 
 back upon them, became a Dominican monk, 
 and then an Inquisitor, and one of the earliest 
 after that inhuman tribunal was established (in 
 1229). This man published a book, in the 
 course of which he describes, very much as I 
 
ADDENDA. 213 
 
 have done, the way in which those colporte^i}" 
 preachers stole away the hearts of the people.* 
 Naturally enough, having no regular ministry, 
 these simple men would make mistakes in their 
 teaching ; and these being exaggerated, "j* the 
 mistakes of a few would be ascribed to the 
 whole body. So a hue and cry of " heresy " 
 was got up against them. Had their moral 
 character been as bad as it was the reverse, 
 they would never have been troubled. But a 
 word against the teaching of the Church was 
 not to be tolerated. And Innocent III. had 
 scarcely succeeded to the throne of the Church, 
 in 1 198, when that haughty Pontiff thought to 
 signalise his reign by proceedings against this 
 sect. But he was wise in his generation, and 
 having learnt how extensive was the defection, 
 and unblemished their character, he made offers 
 to them of concessions with a view to conciliate 
 
 * Curiously enough, though I never saw the book itself, in a 
 box of books which I had bought in London about fifty years 
 ago, when residing there, from the library of a retired Indian, 
 and afterwards sent me to Scotland, I found the interstices of 
 the box stuffed with some twenty or thirty leaves of an old 
 Latin book, and on reading them I could easily identify them 
 with our Inquisitor's book, for they told the very tale of the 
 pack-merchant preachers — which I wish I had not destroyed. 
 
 t But, as a friend once said to me of a similar case, for one 
 error they would teach they would teach twenty truths, and the 
 one correct the other. 
 
214 ADDENDA. 
 
 them. But it was too late. And, chafed at 
 their refusal to return to the bosom of the 
 Church, he set on foot, in 1209, ''an atrocious 
 series of crusades, led by Simon de Montfort, 
 Earl of Leicester, and extending over thirty 
 years. By this terrific war the swarming 
 misbelievers of Provence were almost literally 
 drowned in blood. The remnant which escaped 
 the sword of the Crusaders fell a prey to ruth- 
 less agents of the Inquisition — the Tribunal 
 now established permanently by the Council of 
 Toulouse, 1229, for noting and extinguishing 
 all kinds of heretical pravity." * 
 
 Mezerai (" Hist, de France ")t tells us that 
 the pretext for this war was an accusation 
 brought against Raymond, Count of Toulouse, 
 of harbouring the Albigenses in his dominions, 
 and that an army of 400,000 cross-bearers was 
 raised against him, among whom were five or 
 six bishops. They took the town of Beziers, 
 and put all to the sword, to the number of 
 60,000 — pursuing the war with like cruelty and 
 fury in many other places ; and Montfort, the 
 general of this holy war, was rewarded with the 
 greatest part of the Count's dominions, while 
 
 * Hardvvick's " History of the Cliristian Cliurcli " (Middle 
 Age), p. 310 (1853). 
 
 t Quoted by Fraser, "On the Prophecies," p. 114. 
 
ADDENDA. 215 
 
 the Count himself was deposed, as a favourer 
 of heretics, Montfort being declared lord of all 
 the countries he had conquered.* 
 
 Such is the answer for the most part given, 
 to the question Where was that " wilderness " 
 to which " the woman tied from the face of the 
 serpent " (chap. xii. 6, 14)? 
 
 But I see no reason why we should restrict 
 the "wilderness" to which "the woman fled 
 from the face of the serpent " to the South of 
 France, or localise it at all. Christ's faithful 
 witnesses were not confined to France or any 
 
 * A large body of those faithful witnesses fled from their 
 pursuers up the High Alps, and when still pursued, went higher 
 and higher up, till their enemies, unable to face a region of 
 almost perpetual snow, gave up the pursuit. In that inhospitable 
 solitude the refugees settled down — making for themselves little 
 liamlets along the line of a parish (as it afterwards became), 
 eighty miles long. By degrees, having neither pastors nor 
 teachers, the children lost nearly all that their fathers had suffered 
 for, and at length almost their French tongue, speaking a mongrel 
 patois. Nor did any one seem willing to encounter the rigour 
 of that climate, as a missionary pastor, till Felix Netf — full of 
 fruitful work elsewhere — got it made known to Louis Philippe, 
 during his reign, tliat he would willingly exchange a paradisaical 
 parish in the Valley for that of the High Alps, if he had an offer 
 of it. And he had it ; and the story of that heroic martyr to a 
 climate to which he vainly hoped to naturalise himself, is told 
 n a small 32mo book published by the London Religious Tract 
 Society — which I regret to learn they have allowed to go out ot 
 print. 
 
2i6 ADDENDA. 
 
 one country. Throughout all Papal Chris- 
 tendom " hidden " ones were to be found — 
 little knots here and there, who sighed and 
 cried over the hideous antichristianism called 
 "the holy Catholic Church" — a gigantic State- 
 Church, with a priesthood of boundless ambition, 
 holding itself as much above the secular powers 
 as the spiritual is above the corporeal and 
 ought to rule it — a priesthood on whose altars 
 sacrifice is offered for the sins both of the livingf 
 and the dead, but which had no food for hungry 
 souls. Well might one say "the word of the 
 Lord was precious in those days : there was no 
 open vision " ! It was " not a famine of bread, 
 nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word 
 of the Lord " (Amos viii. ii); "gleanings, as 
 the shaking of an olive tree, two or three 
 berries on the top of the uppermost bough, four 
 or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful 
 tree " (Isa. xvii. 6). In other words, the 
 faithful witnesses of Christ were, during the 
 whole of that protracted period of 1260 years 
 of cruel persecution of all who dared to refuse 
 its blasphemous claims, invisible — the true 
 Church of Christ was nowhere to be seen ; it 
 wanted that " note " of a true Church, of which 
 the Church of Rome boasts that it is possessed 
 by it alone — visibility. 
 
ADDENDA. 217 
 
 Returning for a moment to the Valleys, after 
 the savage massacre of 1209, "heretics," we 
 may well suppose, would be slow to settle there 
 again. But we know well how, as late as 1655, 
 the Duke of Savoy found so large a number 
 of his subjects who refused to return to the 
 Church, that, failing all missionary efforts to 
 convert them, he determined to send an army 
 against them, requiring them either to submit 
 or at once leave the country, and, on their 
 refusing both, to put them to the sword. This 
 roused the indignation of Oliver Cromwell, 
 who had by that time risen to supreme power, 
 as Protector of the Commonwealth of England. 
 
 " The object of his foreign policy was to unite the 
 Protestant State, with Britain at their head, in a defen- 
 sive league against Popery, then and now the enemy 
 of civil and religious liberty. Spain (the great under- 
 propper of the Roman Babylon, the natural enemy of 
 the honest interest) he determined to humble, and in 
 due time he did. With France, less subject to the 
 yoke of Rome, he allied himself, making such terms 
 as he pleased ; extorting from the Mazarin, a prince 
 of the Church of Rome, protection for Rome's enemies, 
 and full pardon for offences committed against her in 
 the heart of France itself. In the summer of 1655, 
 the persecution of the Protestants in the valleys of 
 Piedmont afforded an occasion for displaying, in the 
 noblest light, the greatness of the Protector, and of 
 
2i8 ADDENDA. 
 
 the nation which he represented. The tidings of these 
 cruel oppressions affected the stern conqueror to tears. 
 The treaty with France was ready to be signed that 
 day. He refused to put his name to it until he received 
 assurance of protection for the persecuted Piedmontese, 
 and immediately wrote, not only to the Duke of Savoy 
 himself, but to Louis XIV., to Cardinal Mazarin, the 
 Kings of Sweden and Denmark, the States-General, 
 the Swiss Cantons, and even Ragotaki, the Prince of 
 Transylvania, pleading for their interposition. Had 
 his remonstrances proved unsuccessful, he had fully 
 prepared to exact compliance at the point of the sword. 
 A protector not of the British realm only, but of the 
 Protestantism of Europe, this ' usurper ' might claim, 
 without fiction, the title of ' Defender of the Faith.' 
 Meantime, the supremacy of England on the seas was 
 upheld by Blake, whose guns thundered on the shores 
 of the Mediterranean, exacting justice and submission 
 from every hostile power." * 
 
 * Enc.ycl. Britann. (9th ed.), vol. vi., art. Cromwell, p. 603. 
 See also Carlyle's " Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," 
 at the date referred to. 
 
 It was those frightful massacres of the Duke of Savo3'"s army, 
 and the indignation which they roused throughout all Protestant 
 Europe, that kindled the inspiration of our Milton to write that 
 noble sonnet : — 
 
 "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
 Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old 
 When all our fathers worshipped stones, 
 Forget not : in Thy book record their groans 
 Who were Thy slieep, and in their ancient fold 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 
ADDENDA. 219 
 
 " And I smv under the altar tJie souls of them 
 that had been slain for the word of God, and 
 for the testimony which they held: and they 
 cried with a great voice, saying, Hozv long, O 
 Master, the holy and true, dost Thou not jitdge 
 and avenge our blood on the^n that dwell on the 
 earth ? And there was given theyn, to each one, 
 a white robe ; and it was said tmto them, that 
 they should rest yet for a little time, until their 
 fellow-servants also and their brethren, which 
 should be killed even as they were, should be 
 fulfilled" (Rev. vi. 9- 11). 
 
 II. 
 
 In quoting chap. xv. 6, I used the A.V. ad- 
 visedly, and in a note (p. 128), I stated that the 
 text adopted in the R.V., in one clause of this 
 verse, was one of the worst in that version. I 
 refer to the clause "clothed in pure and white 
 linen" — for which the R.V. has "arrayed with 
 [precious] stone, pure and bright," marg. 
 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
 To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
 O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
 The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow 
 A hundredfold, who, having learned Thy ways, 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 
 
220 ADDENDA. 
 
 " Many ancient authorities read in linen.'' 
 That the " many ancient authorities " followed 
 by the A.V. are right here, I showed at some 
 length elsewhere ; and for the sake of those 
 who take an interest in textual criticism, I may 
 be allowed to transfer to these pages what I 
 wrote several years ago, in two articles, to 
 illustrate what I take to be the fallacious 
 principle on which the text of the Greek New 
 Testament of Drs. Westcott and Hort is con- 
 structed — as in this case, and many others 
 followed in the R.V. Dr. Hort has written a 
 masterly volume, entitled " Introduction to the 
 Greek Testament " ; and as that Greek Testa- 
 ment is now much used in the Universities, it 
 is but fair in this case at least audire alteram 
 partem. 
 
 In the articles referred to I gave a number 
 of examples of the impossible readings which 
 the textual principle of Drs. Westcott and 
 Hort's Greek Testament necessitated, to show 
 its fallaciousness ; and this being one of them, 
 I set down here the criticism which I wrote 
 upon it. 
 
 " Though I should be sorry to treat this reading in 
 the bantering style of Sir Edmund Beckett, his argu- 
 ments against it, which had occurred to myself before 
 
ADDENDA. 221 
 
 I read them,* will not be easily refuted. But, as I have 
 something of my own to say, I will put the case in the 
 way that suits my own ideas, (i) Angels are often 
 represented in Scripture as appearing to men, and 
 usually their dress — evidently symbolical — is described. 
 But where do we ever read of their having anything 
 upon them of the nature of ornament! and does not the 
 idea of a company of ornamented angels issuing from 
 the temple strike one as something ludicrous ? But 
 (2) even though this difficulty could be got over, 
 would it be natural, supposing this to be the true read- 
 ing, to express the sense of it in this form — * clothed 
 with stone,' in the singular number, and with no 
 adjective to denote the quaHty of the stone ? To 
 obviate this manifest incongruity, the Revisers have 
 inserted — with what right ? the reader may ask — the 
 supplement * precious,^ and, still further to relieve the 
 repulsiveness of the statement, have rendered it 
 ' arrayed with precious stone.' But, in vindication of 
 what Dr. Hort justly calls ' the bold image ' of this 
 reading, he refers, after Tischendorf, to the lxx. render- 
 ing of Ezek. xxviii. 13, as the Latin fathers who so 
 read were fain to do. But the cases are entirely differ- 
 ent. In the passage referred to the King of Tyrus in 
 his pride is thus addressed : — ' Thou sealest up the 
 sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast 
 been in Eden, the garden of God ; thou hast been 
 clothed with every precious stone, the sardius, topaz, 
 and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, 
 the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold.' 
 
 * "Should the Revised New Testament be Authorised?" 
 Murray, 1882J, pp. 179-82. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 To which I answer, it is one thing to describe, as 
 beheld in vision, a proud mortal man strutting about in 
 all the splendour that nine or ten of the most precious 
 stones would make him to glitter in — after the manner 
 of Oriental monarchs — a splendour of which he was 
 soon to be stripped ; but a very different thing, surely, 
 it would be to describe a vision of angels issuing forth 
 from the temple of God so decorated, for the purpose of 
 pouring out vials of wrath upon an accursed system or 
 its votaries. In the former case costly ornaments, such 
 as Orientals pride themselves upon in proportion to 
 their rarity and number, suitably represent the very 
 thing intended : in the latter the incongruity is too 
 apparent to need pointing out. Besides, in Ezekiel 
 the stones are specified, and the word * precious ' is 
 suitably added, even though their names might have 
 rendered that superfluous — 'every precious stone' 
 {iravTa \i6ov '^(^prjarov) : whereas here the naked word 
 " stone " — in the singular number, and with no qualify- 
 ing adjective — is enough to condemn the reading as 
 plainly an error, and all the rather as it is created by 
 the mere substitution of one letter for another — the 
 two words being otherwise identical. (3) Though the 
 epithets * pure and bright ' are applicable enough to 
 precious stones, it is worthy of note that in another 
 chapter of this same book these are the words which 
 are applied to the ' fine linen ' in which the bride, the 
 Lamb's wife, was seen arrayed (Rev. xix. 8). To this 
 it is replied that there the word used for ' fine linen ' 
 is its usual word, /Svaaivo^, whereas in our passage the 
 word used in the received text is \ivov, which is never 
 used for fine linen. But this rather strengthens the 
 argument for the received text. For the very reason 
 
ADDENDA. 223 
 
 why ^va(jLvo<i is not used here is that the fineness of 
 the linen is expressed by no fewer than two adjectives 
 — ** pure, bright " (Kadapov XafiTrpov)- — so that, were 
 we to translate literally, without inserting the word 
 "fine " at all — thus, "clothed in linen, pure, bright" — 
 the whole idea of the received reading would be per- 
 fectly brought out. (4) If still it be asked whether it 
 would not be more natural for copyists to change the 
 harsh word * stone ' in such a passage into the smooth 
 word * linen,' than the reverse — I answer, ' Yes, if we 
 could suppose this done intentionally^ but that we never 
 suppose : we hold it to be a pure mistake — the sub- 
 stitution of one letter for another, giving to one word 
 which in every other letter is identical with another a 
 sense totally different. Bengel's rule — that the rough 
 reading is preferable to the smooth one, cceteris paribus 
 — is an excellent one. But to apply it to mere blunders 
 is to abuse it. 
 
 A word now on the textual evidence. Of the Apo- 
 calypse only five Uncials are known to exist, and only 
 three of the oldest class, nAC, with Bg (8th century), 
 and P2 (9th century), and several cursives. Reckoning 
 versions, the evidence is fairly balanced : for the re- 
 vised text (\l6ov), AC, three cursives and the margin 
 of another, the two best copies of the Vulgate, and 
 " some MSS. known to Andreas " (an Apocalyptic 
 commentator of 6th century), but who himself does not 
 adopt it : for the received text (Xivov, variously written 
 Xivovv, \r]vovv, Xrjvovi, Xi-jvov), NB2P2, Latin MSS. known 
 to Hay mo (9th century), copies of the Vulgate, the 
 Clementine edition of Vulgate, the Syriac and Armenian ; 
 and of the fathers Tichonius (4th century), Andreas 
 and Primasius (6th century). 
 
224 ADDENDA. 
 
 Thus viewed, this repulsive reading has not even 
 such textual evidence as should alone entitle it to 
 a hearing. The more regrettable, therefore, is its 
 presence in the Revised Version.* 
 
 * Of the critical editors, Lachmann, Tregelles, and Westcott 
 and Hort, read Xidov, vviiile Griesbach and Tischendorf retain 
 XtVoi'. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, &^ Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 

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BS2827 .B87 
 
 The Apocalypse : its structure and 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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