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S. JOHN. (Third Letter.)

PREFACE.

This is another sample of the private correspondence of an Apostle. It is not an official letter like those of S. Paul to Timothy and Titus, but a private one, like that to Philemon. This Letter was no doubt written about the same time as the second Letter and so towards the close of S. John's life.

The second and third Letters lead us to the more average every-day life of Christendom at the end of the first century. The tone of their Christianity is deep, earnest, severe and devout. Yet it has the quiet of the Christian Church and home as at present constituted. The writer is grave and reserved. He condemns the spirit of heresy in the second Letter. His condemnation of the spirit of schism is written in the third.

FRANK SCHELL BALLENTINE,

Christ's Church Rectory,

Scranton, Pa., Trinitytide, 1901.

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THE REVELATION OF S. JOHN

PREFACE.

THE Revelation of S. John is a Christian Epic. It is more than that. It is The Great Universal Epic of the Ages. The dramatic element runs like a golden thread through the whole, and the lyric bursts out from time to time in outpourings of the soul towards God unsurpassed by the God-intoxicated prophets and Psalmists of old, yet it is the epic which predominates and gives its majestic tone and character to the whole.

A true understanding of this noble poem rests on the recognition of the one great fact that the symbol and not the image is the characteristic feature of its figure of speech.

The imagery of other world poets can be fitted into pictures. But Hebrew symbolism, such as that of Revelation, never.

If this fundamental fact is remembered much misunderstanding of this great Poet will be avoided and his thought and feeling will be appreciated as never before. In interpreting such symbolism we need to school ourselves constantly in self-restraint. We must not take it for granted that every partic

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definite idea.

ular personage is meant to convey to our minds a We are not to spoil the effect of the whole by stopping to look for a meaning in every detail of a complex presentation.

The Revelation is a Vision of visions. It is not to be judged by the laws of time. For while on the shadowy background of this dream movement the successive scenes do appeal to the imagination as a sequence of dim but majestic pictures, yet the relation of the several parts to the whole is not that of temporal succession. The visions of the Seals, and of the Trumpets, and of the Bowls, form three distinct groups of scenes from three distinct points of view.

The earlier visions of the Seals bring to our view the ordinary phenomena of the world's great story, -war, famine, death, revolution. The series of the Trumpets shows us another,—a spiritual war carried on in the world-a war of which the changes and chances of this mortal life are but the external signs and tokens, and the constant reminders that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against various orders of fallen angels, against those who hold sway in the darkness around us, against those wicked spirits in the air above us." The third series of visions in which the Bowls are brought to view shows us that the war carried on here among men, and in men, has also

its heavenly counterpart. In other words, the real conflict in which we are all engaged is not simply between good men and bad men, nor is it only between man as such, and the devil. Our God is the All-ruler, his Son Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega of his creation and government, and it is he who is our all-conquering fellow who is constantly planning and fighting for us.

From beginning to end the numbers three and seven are constantly recurring. At first we read of the Seven Stars and the Seven Gold Lampstands. Then we hear of the Seven Angels of the Seven Churches. The Book is sealed with Seven Seals. There are Seven Kings. There are Seven Thunders. The Lamb has Seven Horns and Seven Eyes which are the Seven Spirits of God. There are Seven Benedictions in the course of the Visions. Seven Choruses are sung with ascriptions of from a threefold to a sevenfold character. Seven Angels come forward with Seven Trumpets. The Red Dragon has Seven Heads with Seven He sweeps down a third of the stars. the Sun, Moon and Stars is darkened. earth, sea, trees, etc., is destroyed. three woes. There are three books. Seven Bowls in three acts. The Chorus of Baby

Diadems.

A third of

A third of

There are

There are

lon's woe is three times sung by three different sets of men, Kings, Merchants, Seamen.

The Revealer delights in these symbolic numbers.

An intelligent and devout reader of the Book of Revelation was once asked: "What is the form

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"It is Chaos," was his reply.

And he voiced the sentiment of many who have tried their best, and in vain, to unravel the thread of its meaning as it winds in and out among its sublime and shifting scenes.

If one of Shakespeare's plays were presented today so that preludes and contents, arguments and comments, visions, choruses, prologues, and epilogues, ran straight on in ordinary prose paragraphs or verses, without any such ordering of the text as the modern reader is used to, and without the traditional modes of recitation which the ancients with their stronger memory enjoyed, Chaos would it indeed become.

That is just what has befallen the Book of the Revelation of S. John.

Not that it is in the fullest sense of the term a complete and well rounded Drama like one of Shakespeare's plays. For it is not. Yet, as already intimated, it is dramatic and has the dramatic

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