quotations will readily exhibit the coincidences: "The mind, unless it is pure and holy, comprehends not God." "Cast out whatsoever things rend thy heart; nay, if they could not be extracted otherwise, thou shouldst have plucked out thy heart itself with them." "I will be agreeable to friends, gentle and yielding to enemies." (Elsewhere, however, Seneca commends justice rather than lenience.) "If you imitate the gods, confer benefits even on the unthankful; for the sun rises even on the wicked, and the seas are open to pirates." "Apply thyself rather to the true riches. It is shameful to depend for a happy life on silver and gold." "Do you, being covered with countless ulcers, mark the pimples of others ?" "Good does not grow of evil, any more than a fig of an olive tree. The fruits correspond to the seed." With other sentiments in the Christian gospel Seneca's doctrine betrays a near resemblance. Compare the remark of Jesus as to the whited sepulchre of Pharisaism with the words of the Stoic: "Within is no good; if thou shouldst see them, not where they are exposed to view, but where they are concealed, they are miserable, filthy, vile; adorned without like their own walls.......Then it appears how much real foulness beneath the surface this borrowed

glitter has concealed." Well-known Christian parables naturally recur to the mind when reading such passages from Seneca as this: "Divine seeds are sown in human bodies. If a good husbandman receives them, they spring up like their origin......; if a bad one, they are killed as by barren and marshy ground, and then weeds are produced in place of grain ;" and this: "O how great is the madness of those who embark on distant hopes: I will buy, I will build, I will lend out, I will demand payment, I will bear honours; then, at length, I will resign my old age wearied and sated to rest. Believe me, all things are uncertain even to the prosperous."

Paul's epistles, also, have a frequent counterpart in Seneca's pages. "I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls," says Paul; and Seneca observes : Good men toil; they spend and are spent." Paul compares the strenuous Saint with an athlete; and so does Seneca: "What blows do athletes receive in their face! what blows all over their body! Yet they bear all the torture from thirst of glory. Let us also overcome all things, for our

reward is not a crown or a palm-branch or the trumpeter proclaiming silence for the announcement of our name, but virtue and strength of mind and peace acquired ever after." A few more quotations may be arranged in pairs:

:

Paul: "Overcome evil with good." Seneca: “Pertinacious goodness overcomes evil men.”

Paul: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” Seneca: "To obey God is liberty."

Paul: "Who among men knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him ?.. We received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given to us by God." Seneca: "I have a better and a whereby I can discern the true from the false. discovers the good of the mind."

surer light The mind

Even where the language differs the ethical atmosphere is the same. Where Seneca says, "Virtue is barred to none ; she is open to all, she receives all, she invites all, gentlefolk, freedmen, slaves, kings, exiles alike," or "Nature bids me assist men, and whether they be bond or free, whether gentlefolk or freedmen, whether they enjoy liberty as a right or as a friendly gift, what matter? Wherever a man is there is room for doing good "-Paul says: "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is no male and female; for you all are one in Christ Jesus;" or "Not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free; but Christ is all things and in all."

Yet it is plain that Seneca's Stoicism diverged, in important respects, from the creed of the early Christians. The Pantheistic and impersonal Supreme Being of the Stoics, and their uncertainty as to man's immortality, contrast strongly with the Heavenly Father, the Son of God, the Devil, and the Resurrection doctrine of the Christian Saints. We can best account for the likeness between many of the moral principles of the Stoics and the Christians by the very natural supposition that, in the first century of the Christian era, the movement towards a larger ethical doctrine was se widespread that it affected both the academies and the clubs, the well-born philosopher and the plebeian revivalist; and that both Seneca and the New Testament writers caught up from the religious current of the age words and phrases

and ideas to which the merest inflexion would give a Stoical or Christian character.*

8. The Apocalypse.-The Emperor Nero, on June 9th, 68, † lay stretched on a mattress in the house of Phaon the freedman, outside the walls of Rome. A group of persons looked coldly on as, hearing the tramp of horses, and knowing that his pursuers would soon fall upon him, he placed a dagger to his throat and slew himself. For a brief period Galba wore the purple. With shuddering expectation, people heard and believed the strange report that Nero had been spirited away beyond the Euphrates, and would some day return with an avenging army.

Between June 9th, 68, and January 15th, 69, when Galba was murdered, an unknown writer composed, in the Aramaic tongue, a part (perhaps we may say the greater part) of the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation or Unveiling. From Aramaic the work was translated into Greek; but this Greek is unlike that used in the New Testament generally. It has Hebraic constructions, inelegant phrases, grammatical errors. If we take away the first three chapters (which give an Introduction, and contain Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia) and the final verses (xxii. 6 to end), we shall still have left a composition marked by a dramatic unity, and embracing all the important incidents of the great Vision. The epistles to the Seven Churches form no necessary element of the Apocalypse; and the Apocalypse proper makes no reference to these or any other Churches. piece added at the end consists of miscellaneous and disconnected verses. Now, the two portions we have thus cut out are the only sections of the book in which the name "John" occurs (in the Revised Version). We suspect, then, that the name of John may not be the right name of the author. Did the author of the Apocalypse write the (so-called) Gospel of John? The total unlikeness of style and spirit supplies an emphatic answer, No. Did a com

The

* For the parallels above given see special dissertation in J. B. Lightfoot's "St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians." Useful little chapters on the moral earnestness which was developing itself in the Roman empire during the first Christian century will be found in W. W. Capes's "Early Empire" (" Epochs of Ancient History").

f A misprint on p. 22 gives the date as 67.

panion of Jesus write the Apocalypse? We look in vain for a trace of any personal acquaintance. Was it written by that "John the Presbyter" of whom Papias speaks (in the second century)? Evidence fails here also. Looking again at the portions we have cut out, we meet the name Jesus" seven times; in the rest of the book—that is to say, in the Apocalypse itself—it is used only in these phrases: "The testimony of Jesus" (four times), "the faith of Jesus," and "the martyrs of Jesus." If we remove the passages which make allusion to Jesus, the general sense and purpose of the Vision remain untouched. The Apocalypse is then seen to be a Jewish prophecy or poem, in which, after the manner of the books of "Daniel" and "Enoch," great events move before the eye in the guise of allegory. A Christian writer, struck with the graphic religiousness of the work, and admiring the realism of its visions of the age of Messiah, translated it for Greek readers, added the closing verses and the introduction (in which are placed the Seven Epistles), and inserted references to Jesus, and such glosses as "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified" (xi. 8). This translation may date in the reign of Hadrian (117–138). Possibly the Jewish portion had been already interpolated; and the Christian additions may have proceeded from more than one hand.*

More than once we have observed the Jewish fondness for literature which unveiled the divine machinery of the world, and showed how God would effect the final triumph of the Saints-i.e., the Pious and Sincerely-devout as distinguished from Formalists and Ritualists. Doubtless the writer of the Apocalypse knew the book of Enoch and its mystic pictures of things celestial. A comparison of the expressions used in the two books will render this clear: Apocalypse: "Round about the throne four living creatures." Enoch: "On the four sides of the Lord of Spirits I saw four presences." A: Ten thousand times ten thousand angels about the shrone. E: 66 Ten thousand times ten thousand were before him." A: "How long," cry the souls of the martyred Saints, "O Master, holy and true, dost thou not

* Dr. Davidson considers that all the passages relating to the Lamb have a Christian origin.

judge and avenge our blood?" E: "The prayer of the righteous that it (the shedding of their blood) may not be in vain before the Lord of Spirits, that judgment may be done unto them." A: The angels of the winds. E: The spirits of the winds. A: "Fountains of waters of life." E: "Many fountains of wisdom, and all the thirsty drank. of them, and were filled with wisdom." A: A star from heaven fallen. E: A star fell from heaven. A: Sinners tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels." E: The unrighteous burn "in the presence of the righteous." A: Blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horses' bridles." E: "The horses will walk up to the breast in the blood of sinners." A: "The book of life." E: "The books of the living were opened." A: "The sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them." E: "The earth also will give back those that are treasured up within it, and Sheol also will give back that which it has received, and hell will give back that which it owes." A; “Cast into the lake of fire." E "Cast into that fiery abyss." A: A new heaven and a new earth......no more curse. E: "The first heaven will depart and pass away, and a new heaven will appear......sin will no more be mentioned for ever." In both books the resurrection doctrine appears, angels take active part, animals represent persons and nations, and the number Seven has special significance. In the Apocalypse this number dominates the whole movement of the Vision; there are seven lamps, seven seals, seven horns, seven eyes, seven angels, seven trumpets, seven vials, seven heads, seven thunders.*

Where did the author of the Apocalypse write? Perhaps in the isle of Patmos ; perhaps on the western coast of Asia Minor. In any case, the variety of scenery depicted in his visions seems to indicate that he had travelled.

We may now take a summary view of the scenes unrolled in this Book of the Unveiling.

The opening words run: "I saw, and, behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard, a voice as of a trumpet speaking with me, said, Come up hither,

* The best English edition of the Book of Enoch is that by R. H. Charles, who gives the above-quoted parallels in his " Introduction.”