Every age, every Church, every sect, every controversy, in some way or other contributes something to the working out, the testing, or the illustrating of some part of the revelation of God. Thus the history of the apprehension of Christian truth by man, which commences within the New Testament, is continued in the history of the Church to the end of time; and still, while it is continued, it is in some sort a history of progress, and one in which the Spirit of God mingles, and which the providence of God molds. The line of separation between the apostolic period and all the subsequent periods of this history is this: That the apostolic period is not only a part of the history of the apprehension of truth by man; it is also a part of the history of the communication of truth by God. It is the first stage of the one, and the last stage of the other. The aspect which the gospel bears in the writings of the apostles is a communication from God of what it really is, a revelation of what he intended that it should be in the minds of men for ever. This character of the apostolic writings has, without variation of testimony, been acknowledged by the Church from the beginning; but this acknowledgment has been confined to these writings, and has never been extended to subsequent expositions or decrees.

The sum of what has been said is this: 1. There are words (definite doctrinal communications) of which it is said by the Lord Jesus, “The words which thou gavest me I have given them.” 2. These words are not only those which he spake with his lips in the days of his flesh; they include other words, afterward given through men in the Spirit, during a period of time which is represented to us by the books of the New Testament. 3. Those words were finished in that period, and have received no subsequent additions. T. D. B.

1. JUDE, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by 2 God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: mercy unto you, and peace, and 3 love, be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. 4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying 5 the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of 6 Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under dark- 7 ness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange 8 flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also 9 these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. 10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, 11 as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and 12 perished in the gainsaying of Core. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the 13 roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom 14 is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, 15 prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which 16 ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. 17 But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our 18 Lord Jesus Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who 19 should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sen- 20 sual, having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy

21 faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy 22 of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a differ- 23 ence: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment 24 spotted by the flesh. Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present 25 you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

THE motion of the heart Godward, holy and divine affection, makes prayer real and living and acceptable to the living God, to whom it is presented—the pouring out of thy heart to him that made it, and therefore hears it and understands what it speaks and how it is moved and affected in calling on him. It is not the gilded paper and good writing of a petition that prevails with a king, but the moving sense of it; and, to the King that discerns the heart, heart-sense is the sense of all, and that which he alone regards. He listens to hear what that speaks, and takes all as nothing where that is silent. All other excellence in prayer is but the outside and fashion of it; that is the life of it. L.—Why is there so little of the life of God in our souls, or the love of God in our hearts, or the peace of God in our bosoms, or the image of God in our lives? Chiefly because we are so little in prayer—cordial, fervent, humble, persevering prayer; because we talk so much about God in public, but so little with God in private; because we are so much more in every exercise than in devotion; and thus, the blessing of the Holy Spirit not being abundantly vouchsafed, because not fervently implored, a withering blight comes over all our doing, and we read and hear and talk and labor almost, if not altogether, in vain. Kirke White.—The most solemn faith in God as a real object is not the most arduous act of the reason and the will. Oh, no; it is to pray, to pray as God would have us. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon—this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian’s warfare upon earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord! S. T. C.

THE “wise master-builders,” who placed the first “living stones” upon that “Rock of Ages,” are now vanishing from the scene of their labors, at the very time when the newly finished Temple—the type of that spiritual edifice—awaits its destruction from the Roman armies. The greater number of the apostles have early disappeared to the uncertain scenes of their evangelic labors. Of those who fill a prominent place in the Scripture history, JAMES the son of Zebedee has long since died by the sword of Herod, and JAMES, the brother of our Lord, has lately fallen by the tumultuous judgment of the Sanhedrim. JUDE’s voice alone is heard, concurring with Peter’s in denouncing the corruptions of the last times. During the years included within the range of doubt concerning the martyrdom of Paul and Peter (A. D. 66-68) the final revolt of the Jews has broken out; and an exterminating war only awaits its end in the destruction of the Temple. As the prophecy of that catastrophe finished the public testimony of Christ himself, so did its fulfillment set the seal to the work of his apostles. The events themselves were not a more striking confirmation of the divine truth which had predicted them than was the change that they effected the fulfillment of the divine plan of establishing a Church on earth. S.

Jude was a brother of that James whose Epistle to the Twelve Tribes we have already considered. D. F.—As I believe James, “the brother of the Lord,” to be the person intended (v. 1), in consequence I hold this writer to be the Judas of Mat. 13: 55, another brother of our Lord, and a younger son of Joseph and Mary. A.

The short book before us was probably written in Palestine, or some part of Syria, not long before the fall of Jerusalem. It is an Epistle General or

Catholic, addressed to all saints; but its strain is Jewish, like the Epistle of James, and it presupposes in its readers a knowledge of Hebrew history and tradition. While it has much in common with the Epistle of James, it has even more with the Second Epistle of Peter, which it greatly resembles in its vehement invective against those profligate teachers who had begun to disturb and defile the primitive Church. During the last quarter of the first century, some of the Asiatic Churches were notoriously infested with a class of separatists and sectaries who, magnifying their knowledge and exaggerating their liberty, led impure lives, and encouraged others to do likewise. D. F.

1. Sanctified, preserved, and called.** In Christ, God chose them “unto salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth”; he gave them to the Son as the reward of the “travail of his soul” in man’s redemption; and he covenanted with him, on their behalf, to bestow upon them all the grace that should effectually call them into fellowship with him, and confirm them in it unto the end. Hence Jude describes them to whom he writes as “sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.” All things that concern them in time are wisely and graciously ordered from the beginning to the end of their experience, with this view—the bringing them to glory. He prepares all events that befall them (dark and intricate as they may seem) for fulfilling the designs of his everlasting love; and in ways as manifold as the riches of his own wisdom, love, and power, he constrains them, through almighty grace, to obey the call, and henceforth to live indeed. Goode.

3. The common salvation.** God is most free of his best blessings. He affords salvation in common to all his people. He gives honor and riches but to few of them: he gives Christ and heaven to them all. God sometimes denies a crumb even to him on whom he bestows a kingdom. There are many things that a child of God can not promise to himself, but heaven he may reckon on. Jenkyn.

By the faith once delivered to the saints is to be understood the doctrines of the gospel. These were delivered to the saints by holy men, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The saints to whom they were delivered were those who constituted the Church under the old dispensation and the new. The exhortation to contend for them earnestly supposes that they would be powerfully assailed; and yet that they might be known and defended. L. B.—A sad characteristic of the age is the frightful latitudinarianism which is making the most insidious inroads on the faith. A strong dislike has grown up in the minds of many educated and thinking men for all dogmatic teaching: a strong tendency discovers itself in them to accept nothing of Christianity but the spirit of love and philanthropy, and to apply to all its doctrines those supposed solvents, of which infidelity has always had, in her infernal laboratory, a sufficient store at hand. “Let the doctrines fare as they may,” is the cry; “let them thaw away little by little under the objections of the skeptic; all that we care to retain is the spirit which they embody and represent.” We must beware, above all things, how we yield into the hands of the adversary, from the impulse of a false liberality, one jot of that precious deposit of the faith which God has solemnly committed to our charge. E. M. G.

4. One characteristic of the leaders of this apostasy was wantonness. They made the mercy of God in Christ a mere shield to cover their self-indulgence. Instead of purifying their hearts through belief of the truth, they abused the divine grace, as though it relaxed the obligation of continence, and gave some latitude to immorality. So they disgraced the Christian name by living as the heathen, and sheltering their vices under an assertion of divine favor and religious liberty. Another characteristic was willfulness. The men denounced by Jude did not deny the name of God or of Christ, for they vaunted themselves as Christians; but they rejected the Lord’s authority.

5-7. On the punishment that awaited these men Jude is terribly emphatic. He recalls to mind great judgments in the days of old; the destruction of the murmuring, unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness; the reservation of fallen angels to future punishment; and the burning of “Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them” as with an eternal fire, i. e., a fire out of which there is no restoration, a condign and final judgment. The memory of these terrors, illustrating the holy severity of God, should admonish the saints to give no countenance whatever to the ungodly men who had “crept in” to the Christian community. D. F.

7. Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.** In these tremendous declarations of Holy Scripture the same God who promises heaven threatens hell; and the same skepticism which trifles with the one must reject both. Of a truth it is no marvel that such things as these should be bitter and unwelcome to man; that they should naturally tend to fade and disappear from our thoughts like all else we dread and dislike. Who that knows aught of our customary weaknesses can anticipate but that prepossessions, not to be overborne except by the most resolute perseverance of the watchmen of Christ, shall rise against a truth which, were it conceived in its full proportions, would involve the whole face of nature in gloom, would hang the very heavens in black, and make all their daily and nightly glories but the torchlights of a funeral chamber; a truth which loads every instant of life with a weight almost intolerable of responsibility; which, contracting life to a short winter-day, stretches out beyond it the drear, the starless dark of a midnight on which no morrow shall ever dawn; which affrights us with the horrible thought of a duration of woe, counted not by years, but by ages; which tells us—us who live by pity, social enjoyment, mutual kindness, friendship real or supposed—that there can be, and for millions will be, a time when no pity shall exist in the whole wide universe for them; no mercy from God, no compassion from each other, no refuge, no hope; when that on-looking tendency which makes the best happiness of us all shall shrink back upon itself withered and blasted, or exist only to press home to the heart more keenly the reality of eternal, immutable wretchedness? Shall we, indeed, wonder that this mystery of woe—for a mystery it surely is—should ever be an unwilling theme for man to listen to or man to speak? W. A. B.

9. The tradition regarding Moses is supposed to be familiar to the readers of this book, and the allusion to it is made with a view to expose the presumption of the false teachers in disparaging dignities. We should not have known this incident, unless Jude had embodied the tradition in his Epistle, any more than we should have known the names of the Egyptian magicians who withstood Moses and Aaron, if Paul had not mentioned Jannes and Jamhres. Michael, the archangel, appears in the Book of Daniel as a great prince with God, and the protector of the holy nation, Israel. In this capacity he was occupied with the burial of Moses, Israel’s great lawgiver and leader. The point for which Jude makes the allusion is this: the archangel did not speak contemptuously to that mighty spirit of evil, a celestial dignity before he fell, but said, “The Lord rebuke thee.” D. F.

10-13. It is astonishing to see how those who once seemed sons of the morning now at last by the judgment of God are permitted, being past feeling, “to give themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” A great number of such were in the first gospel days; against whom Peter and Jude and John pronounce the just judgment of God. These are beyond all mercy; these are beyond all promises; these are beyond all hopes of repentance; these have no intercessor, nor any more share in the one sacrifice for sin. For these there remains nothing but a fearful looking-for of judgment. These men go whither they will, do what they will; they may range from opinion to opinion, from notion to notion, from sect to sect, but are steadfast nowhere: they are left to their own uncertainties; they have not grace to establish their hearts; and though some of them have boasted themselves of this liberty, yet Jude calls them wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. They are left to be fugitives and vagabonds in the earth, to wander everywhere, but to abide nowhere, until they shall descend to their own place, with Cain and Judas, men of the same fate with themselves. Bun.—Oh, wretchedness beyond words, that, surrounded by love and invited to glory, man should have no heart for happiness, but should still love to cower in the dark while light ineffable solicits him to behold and to enjoy it! Oh, horror yet more terrific, that he whom love and joy can not attract, even vengeance and torment can not alarm; that, unwilling to receive God as merciful, he can not be taught to remember him as just; or to reflect that he who refuses to prepare for the inheritance of the saints in light is by that very refusal hardening his own heart to the temper of the inheritors of darkness! W. A. B.

That sin does not succeed is owing to nothing but want of power and skill. If its malignant nature, as it exists in men and devils, could be fully expressed in action, it would dethrone the God of heaven, abolish his law, overturn his government, extinguish the joy of God and of the universe, and fill the mighty void with everlasting woe. It is a wandering star, which will not obey the impulse of the sun, and which, if able, would blot out the sun, and leave to blackness of darkness every other luminary, that it might roll above the mighty ruin, eclipsed by no superior luster. Let benevolence abandon the throne of the universe, and let sin ascend and take possession of the treasures of knowledge and power, and reign to express its own nature in action, as God reigns to express his love, and it would soon dismay the universe with demonstrations of its evil nature. L. B.

13. What a thought it is that every life that sets itself against the Lord is a futile life, that it comes to nothing at last! It is true on the widest scale. It is true on the narrowest. It is true about all those tempests that have risen up against God’s church and Christ’s gospel like “waves of the sea foaming out their own shame,” and never shaking the great rock that they break against. And it is true about all godless lives; about every man who carries on his work, except in loving obedience to his Father in heaven. There is one power in the world, and none else. When accounts are set right at the end, you will find that the power that seemed to be strong, if it stood against God, was weak as water and has done nothing, and is nothing! Do not waste your lives in a work that is self-condemned to be hopeless! Rather ally yourselves with the tendencies of God’s universe, and do the thing which will last for ever, and live the life that has hope of fruit that shall remain. Submit yourselves to God! Love Christ! Do his will! Put your faith in the Saviour to deliver you from your sins; and, when the wild tossing of that great ocean of ungodly power and rebellious opposition is all hushed down into dead silence, you and your work will last and live hard by the stable throne of God. A. M.

20. The Christians are admonished to keep themselves in the love of God, i. e., in the possession and enjoyment of Divine love as the true element and elixir of a spiritual life. And how? 1. By building themselves up on their most holy faith. So the faith was to be contended for, not with a view to barren controversial victory, but because Christian character must be built thereon. It was delivered to the saints in order that they might continue in it, and not be moved away from the hope of the gospel. 2. By praying in the Holy Ghost; for the Divine Spirit (which the false teachers had not, v. 19) helps infirmities, corrects errors, subdues pride, cures lethargy, kindles fervor, and teaches believers how to pray, and what to pray for as they ought. Between the ascension of their Master and the day of Pentecost, the disciples, and Jude among them, prayed much for the Spirit. After the day of Pentecost it became their privilege, and continues to be ours, to pray in the fellowship of the Spirit, through the mediation of the Son, to the Father of mercies and God of all consolation; the Spirit within us making intercession with unutterable pantings of hope for the manifestation of the glory of the sons of God. D. F.—Because all the precepts and promises in the law and in the gospel do hang upon this, believe; and because the last of the graces of God doth so follow the first, that he glorifieth none but whom he hath justified, nor justifieth any but whom he hath called to a true, effectual, and lively faith in Christ Jesus, therefore Jude, exhorting us to build ourselves, mentioneth here only faith as the thing wherein we must be edified; for that faith is the ground and the glory of all the welfare of this building. Hooker.

Praying in the Holy Ghost. There is a threefold strength needful in prayer, and God by his Spirit puts these three strengths in us: strength of argument to plead with God; strength of faith in taking hold upon God; strength of patience in waiting upon God till we receive what we prayed for. Caryl.

23. Save with fear.** There are crises of temptation, as many of us can testify, when the ground was slipping under our feet, when some sophistry was taking the edge off from the right and from duty, when the desired evil seemed so good, and the enticement of sin was growing so irresistible, and the will was becoming so weak, that all was well-nigh lost for us, and we had perhaps half given ourselves over. If at such a time fear—fear of divine wrath, or fear of loss of reputation, or fear of remorse, yes, or fear even of hell—came to the rescue of the discouraged forces of Christian virtue, and we were enabled to refuse and to overcome, ashamed as we might well be of our surprise and of our all but defeat, we had in that experience a measure of the service that fear could render to our salvation at such a time of imminent peril. Verily we are sometimes saved by fear as well as by hope. T. D. W.

24. Him that is able to keep you.** He says, in the first verse, we are preserved by Jesus Christ. This only wise God and this preserving Jesus Christ are in his mind one and the same. The ability of Christ to keep us is grounded on his power over us, and over those who are the tempters of us. Our danger lies partly in our own hearts. He can master those hearts, and, by the agency of his Holy Spirit, sway and incline them as he pleases. And the same as to the world and Satan; he can overrule their temptations. “Be of good cheer,” he says to us, “I have overcome the world.” “Greater,” says John, “is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” And how all this magnifies the Lord’s power! C. B.—Our Lord and Chief Shepherd will not want one weak sheep or dying lamb that he hath redeemed. He will tell his flock, and gather them all together, and make a faithful account of them to his Father who gave them all to him. Rutherford.

We are to be faultless before his glorious presence. His perfect image will be on us; his own pure eyes will see in us no spot or stain. Faultless before the throne—think of that when sin is tortormenting you. How complete in the end will be your deliverance from it! C. B.—Of his glory. The discovery of this glory is the ultimate product of that infinite wisdom and love that have been working from eternity, and for so many thousand years through all the successions of time, toward the heirs of salvation: the last and complete issue of the great achievements, sharp conflicts, glorious victories, high merits of our mighty Redeemer. All these end in the opening of heaven to all believers. This is the upshot and close of that great design; will it not, think ye, be a satisfying glory? Howe.

WE may observe with admiration the singular fitness of the few words of Jude to close the series of writings through which the faith has been wrought out and consigned to the Church for ever. It only remains for our last instructor to exhort us “earnestly to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints”; to warn us of the dangers of relapse; to entreat us “to build ourselves up on our holy faith, and praying in the Holy Ghost to keep ourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life”; and, finally, to commend us “to him who is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” T. D. B.

THE

1. The Unity, Progress, and Completeness of Doctrine in the Old and New Testament Scriptures.—He who reads through the New Testament finds himself educated as by an orderly scheme of advancing doctrine. The several books seem to have grown into their places as component parts of an organic whole; and “the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” lies before us as an account of a perfected revelation, and a course of divine teaching designed and prepared by one presiding mind. The reality of this progress is very visible; and more especially so when we regard the New Testament as the last stage of that progressive teaching which is carried on through the Scriptures as a whole. Glance from the first words to the last, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—“Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” How much lies between these two! The one the first rudiment of revelation addressed to the earliest and simplest consciousness of man, that, namely, which comes to him through his senses, the consciousness of the material world which lies in its grandeur round him; the other the last cry from within, the voice of the heart of man, such as the intervening teaching has made it; the expression of the definite faith which has been found, and of the certain hope which has been left by the whole revelation of God. The course of teaching which carries us from the one to the other is progressive throughout, but with different rates of progress in the two stages which divide it. In the Old Testament the progress is protracted, interrupted, often languid, sometimes so dubious as to seem like retrogression. Accessions take place in sundry parts, in divers manners, at times under disguises of earthly forms, seeming to suggest mistakes, which have to be themselves corrected. Yet through it all the doctrine grows, and the revelation draws nearer to the great disclosure. Then there is entire suspension. We turn the vacant page which represents the silence of 400 years, and we are in the New Testament.

Now, again there is progress, but rapid and unbroken. Our steps before were centuries; now they are but years. From the manger of Bethlehem on earth to the city of God coming down from heaven the great scheme of things unrolls before us without a check, without a break. First we are conducted through the manifestation of Christ in the flesh: we see and hear and learn to know the living person, who is at once the source and the subject of all the doctrine of which we speak. He is presented as the source of doctrine, delivering with his own lips the first Christian instructions, the first preaching of a present gospel and the pregnant principles of truth. He is presented as the subject of doctrine, for it is himself that he offers to us by word and deed as the object of our faith, and the events which we see accomplished in his earthly history are the predestined substance of all subsequent instruction. Then, in the Book of Acts, Christ is preached as perfected, and as the refuge and life of the world. The results of his appearing are summed up and settled; and men are called to believe and be saved. Those who do so find themselves in new relations to each other; they become one body, and grow into the form and life of a Catholic Church. The state which has thus been entered needs to be expounded, and the life which has been begun needs to be educated. The Apostolic letters perform the work. The questions which universally follow the first submissions of the mind receive their answers, and so the faith which was general grows definite. The rising exigencies of the new light are met, both for the man and for the Church; and we learn what is the happy consciousness, and what the holy conversation, which belong to those who are “in Christ Jesus.” Lastly, as members of the body of Christ, we find ourselves partakers in a corporate life and a history larger than our own. We feel that we are taken up into a scheme of things which is in conflict with the present, and which can not realize itself here. Therefore our final teaching is by prophecy, which shows us, not how we are personally saved and victorious, but how the battle goes upon the whole; and which issues in the appearance of a holy city, in which redemption reaches its end, and the Redeemer finds his joy; in which human tendencies are realized, and divine promises fulfilled; in which the ideal has become the actual, and man is perfected in the presence and glory of God.

2. Relation of the Epistles to the Revelation.—I know not how any man, in closing the Epistles, could expect to find the subsequent history of the Church essentially different from what it is. In those writings we seem, as it were, not to witness some passing storms which clear the air, but to feel the whole atmosphere charged with the elements of future tempest and death. Every moment the forces of evil show themselves more plainly. They are encountered, but not dissipated. Or, to change the figure, we see battles fought by the leaders of our band, but no security is promised by their victories. New assaults are being prepared; new tactics will be tried; new enemies pour on; the distant hills are black with gathering multitudes, and the last exhortations of those who fall at their posts call on their successors to “endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ,” and “earnestly to contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.” The fact is not merely that these indications of the future are in the Epistles, but that they increase as we approach the close, and after the doctrines of the Gospel have been fully wrought out, and the fullness of personal salvation and the ideal character of the Church have been placed in the clearest light, the shadows gather and deepen on the external history. The last words of Paul in the Second Epistle to Timothy, and those of Peter in his Second Epistle, with the Epistles of John and Jude, breathe the language of a time in which the tendencies of that history had distinctly shown themselves; and in this respect these writings form a prelude and a passage to the Apocalypse. Thus we arrive at this book with wants which it is meant to supply; we come to it as men who not only personally are in Christ, and who know what as individuals they have in him, but who also, as members of his body, share in a corporate life, in the perfection of which they are to be made perfect, and in the glory of which their Lord is to be glorified. For this perfection and glory we wait in vain, among the confusions of the world and the ever-active, ever-changing forms of evil. What is the meaning of this wild scene? what is to be its issue? and what prospect is there of the realization of that which we desire? To such a state of mind as this, and to the wants which it involves, this last part of the teaching of God is addressed, in accordance with that system of progressive doctrine wherein each stage of advance ensues in the way of natural sequence from the effect of that which preceded it. T. D. B.

3. Substance and Design of the Book.—The Revelation of John forms the third species of apostolic literature, and the most appropriate and sublime conclusion, the divine seal of the whole. The Gospels and Epistles proceeded from a state of divine illumination united with entire self-control and clear consciousness. The Apocalypse is the result of a special act of inspiration, an immediate revelation of Jesus Christ respecting his advent, dictated, as it were, to the entranced seer by the Holy Ghost. P. S.—It is no “fine phrensy,” but a wonderful work of divine art, curiously wrought and most delicately balanced. This is carried out into the most minute detail, while it is shown on a large scale in the parallelism of the great cyclical visions. Only the most careless reader can suppose the Book to be tangled and confused. It is a masterpiece of construction, fitted and bound together by wisdom from above. D. F.

In matter and form the Revelation is closely allied to the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, particularly the book of Daniel, combining its boldest and most powerful tones in an overwhelming harmony. But with the poetical, symbolical style it unites also the epistolary in the letters to the seven churches. It intersperses its visions with lyric songs of praise, which afford the soul a delightful resting place amid the rushing crowd of events. And it surpasses all the Hebrew prophecies in the sublimity of its views, the majesty of its imagery, the variety of its symbols, the dramatic vividness, unity, and finish of its composition, the progress of its action, and finally in its specifically Christian element, the reference of all the parts to the crucified and now glorified God-man. Prophecy, alike in the Old Testament and in the New, is founded on the idea of the divine government of the world, unavoidably presupposing that history is not a product of chance, but an unfolding of the thoughts and plans of eternal wisdom, justice, and love, and must therefore always issue in the glory of God, the salvation of his people, and the confusion of his enemies. The grand theme of the Old Testament prophecy is the first coming, that of the New Testament prophecy the second coming of the Lord and his kingdom with all the preparatory and attendant events. P. S.—There is one voice in all its epistles, seals, trumpets, vials, plagues, and visions of glory and joy. The Lord cometh. That voice has been sounding along the ages for more than eighteen hundred years; and he has come again and again to the overthrow of one enemy after another, Jew and pagan, priest and emperor; and still it sounds, and still he is coming to the overthrow of superstition, idolatry, and bigotry, wherever found, in whatever form practiced, and by whatever sacred names baptized. Scripture would lead us to be always expecting Christ; and there has always been something present in the world to warrant the expectation. While some who have thought they saw symptoms of his coming to judgment, or of his millennial reign, have been disappointed, others, who have desired his spiritual presence, and have interpreted the providential events of their own times by the light of divine truth, have felt that their prayers for his advent have not been unanswered. Macdonald.

The book is a revelation of the connection between things that are seen and things that are not seen, between things on earth and things in heaven; a revelation which fuses both into one mighty drama, so that the movements of human action and the course of visible fact are half shrouded, half disclosed, amid the glory and the terror of the spiritual agencies at work around us, and of the eternal interests which we see involved. We are borne to the courts above, and the temple of God is opened in heaven, and we behold the events on earth as originating in what passes there. There seals are broken, trumpets are sounded, and vials are poured out which rule the changes of the Church and of nations. While we are looking down through the rolling mists on things that pass below, we are all the time before the throne of God and of the Lamb, and among the four and twenty elders, the four living beings, and the innumerable company of angels; and we hear voices proceeding out of the throne, the cries of disembodied spirits, and hallelujahs that roll through the universe. We see, further, that there is cause for this participation of the world above in the events of the world below, for it be.

comes every moment more plain that the earth is the battle-field of the kingdoms of light and darkness. There is a far bolder revelation than we have had before of the presence and action of the powers of evil. The old serpent is on one side as the Lamb is on the other, and the same light which shows the movements of the Head and Redeemer of our race falls also upon those of the enemy and destroyer. T. D. B.

The Book discloses the triumph of Christianity over all enemies and opposers, its universal prevalence in the world for a long series of years, and its termination in an endless period of glory and happiness. It is filled with encouragement, admonition, and consolation. A final and eternal victory of the Church over all her enemies is echoed at every pause; and a crown of glory is held forth by the Judge of all as ready to be placed on the martyr’s head. A most painful end, moreover, awaits the enemies of the kingdom of God. Even now such a book as the Apocalypse is greatly needed to encourage the faith and hope of Christians in regard to the prospects of the Church, and to comfort them under their various sufferings and discouragements. M. S.

We can see a clear testimony running through it to the holiness of God, to the power of Christ, to the providence which is working in or overruling all things, to the divine purpose which all things and all men are willingly or unwillingly subserving, and to that final triumph of good over evil, of Christ over antichrist, of God over Satan, which will be the last and most decisive justification of the ways of God to men. V.—It is a book of very definite teaching on redemption by blood. This, which is expressed or implied in all the Scriptures, has in the Revelation a marked and solemn emphasis. This holy Apocalypse, in the midst of its most heavenly scenes, celebrates the atoning blood. Saints sing and angels speak of redemption by the blood, cleansing in the blood, and victory by the blood of the Lamb. D. F.—From the beginning to the end, through the long conflict, and in the midst of the glorious issue, there is still one title for him who conquers, and judges, and reigns. It is the Lamb who makes war and overcomes; and from the wrath of the Lamb kings and nations flee. It is the Lamb in whose blood his servants also overcome; in whose blood they have washed their robes; before whom they stand in white raiment; and to whom they ascribe salvation. In the Lamb’s Book of Life the names of the saved are written. The Holy City is the bride, the Lamb’s wife. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it, and the light of it; and the river of the water of life flows for ever from the throne of God and the Lamb. In the peculiar title, thus studiously employed, and illustrated by the repeated mention of the slaying and the blood, we read the doctrine that the ground of the personal is the ground of the general salvation; that the place which the sacrifice of the death of Christ holds in the consciousness of the believer is the same which it also occupies in the history of the Church, and that he conquers for us, and reigns among us, and achieves the restoration of all things, because he has first offered himself for us, and is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. T. D. B.

Notwithstanding the profound depths of this divine book, one feels, in reading it, an impression so sweet and altogether so sublime of the majesty of

God; ideas so lofty of the mystery of Jesus Christ appear; a recognition of the people bought with his blood is so lively; the pictures of his victories and of his dominion are so noble; the songs which celebrate the greatness of those are so wonderful, that there is enough to ravish all heaven and earth. All the beauties of the Scriptures are concentrated in this book; all that is most touching, most vivid, most majestic in the Law and in the Prophets receives here a new splendor, and passes again before our eyes, that we may be filled with the consolations and the graces of all past ages. Here we find again in this apostle the spirit of all the prophets and of all the men commissioned by God. He has received the spirit of Moses, in order to sing the song of the new deliverance of the holy people. He has received the spirit of Isaiah, and of Jeremiah, so as to describe the plagues of the new Babylon, and to astonish the universe with the noise of its fall. It is by the spirit of Daniel that he has disclosed to us the new beast, i. e., the new empire which is the enemy and persecutor of the saints, with its defeat and ruin. By the spirit of Ezekiel he has shown us all the riches of the new temple, where God will be worshiped, i. e., the riches of heaven and of the Church. In fine, all the consolations, all the promises, all the grace, and all the light of the divine books are united in this. All men inspired of God seem to have contributed for it all which they possess of the rich and the magnificent, in order to form the most beautiful picture of Jesus Christ which one can imagine; and we see nothing more clearly shown than that he is truly the word of the Law, the reality of its symbols, the body of its shadows, and the soul of its prophets. Bossuet.

A book with such characteristics fitly concludes the holy Bible. Full of allusions to ancient visions, prophecies, and songs, it brings the whole continuity of Scripture to a sublime and worthy close. At last the patience of patriarchs and saints is rewarded; the longings of Israel and of the Church are fulfilled; and the glory of God shines unhindered on a scene of righteousness and peace. D. F.

4. The date of the Revelation.—This is given by the great majority of critics as a. n. 95-97. The weighty testimony of Irenæus is almost sufficient to prevent any other conclusion. He says: “It (i. e., the Revelation) was seen to very long time ago, but almost in our own generation, at the close of Domitian’s reign.” Irenæus had the best opportunity to collect authentic accounts of this fact from one who, like Polycarp, was a personal friend and pupil of the apostle. P. S.—Eusebius also records that, in the persecution under Domitian, John the apostle and evangelist was banished to the island of Patmos for his testimony of the divine Word. There is no mention in any writer of the first three centuries of any other time or place. Unsupported by any historical evidence, some commentators have put forth the conjecture that the Revelation was written as early as the time of Nero. This is simply their inference from the style and contents of the book, and is connected with a theory of the early fulfillment of its chief prophecies. S.—[This is also the view of Trench, Alford, Vaughan, Schaff (“Apos. History,” p. 405), Fraser, Barnes, and others, who present considerations in its support that seem to be conclusive. The Neronic date is supported by some German and English scholars, and by Stuart, Macdonald, Cowles, and Fisher. B.]

5. Interpretation.—A short account of the different directions in which attempts have been made to interpret the Revelation is all that can be given in this place. The interval between the apostolic age and that of Constantine has been called the Chiliastic period of Apocalyptic interpretation. The visions of John were chiefly regarded as representations of general Christian truths, scarcely yet embodied in actual facts, for the most part to be exemplified or fulfilled in the reign of Antichrist, the coming of Christ, the Millennium, and the Day of Judgment. The fresh hopes of the early Christians, and the severe persecution they endured, taught them to live in those future events with intense satisfaction and comfort. They did not entertain the thought of building up a definite consecutive chronological scheme even of those symbols which some moderns regard as then already fulfilled; although from the beginning a connection between Rome and antichrist was universally allowed, and parts of the Revelation were regarded as the filling-up of the great outline sketched by Daniel and Paul. Immediately after the triumph of Constantine, the Christians, emancipated from oppression and persecution, and dominant and prosperous in their turn, began to lose their vivid expectation of our Lord’s speedy advent and their spiritual conception of his kingdom, and to look upon the temporal supremacy of Christianity as a fulfillment of the promised reign of Christ on earth. The Roman empire, become Christian, was regarded no longer as the object of prophetic denunciation, but as the scene of a millennial development. This view, however, was soon met by the figurative interpretation of the millennium, as the reign of Christ in the hearts of all true believers. As the barbarous and heretical invaders of the falling empire appeared, they were regarded by the suffering Christians as fulfilling the woes denounced in the Revelation. In the dawn of the reformation, the views to which the reputation of Abbot Joachim had given currency were taken up by the harbingers of impending change, as by Wycliffe and others; and they became the foundation of that great historical school of interpretation which up to this time seems the most popular of all. It is impossible to construct an exact classification of modern interpreters of the Revelation. They are generally placed in three great divisions: 1. The Historical or Continuous expositors, in whose opinion the Revelation is a progressive history of the fortunes of the Church from the first century to the end of time. 2. The Præterist expositors, who are of opinion that the Revelation has been almost or altogether fulfilled in the time which has passed since it was written: that it refers principally to the triumph of Christianity over Judaism and Paganism, signalized in the downfall of Jerusalem and of Rome. This is the favorite interpretation with the critics of Germany. 3. The Futurist expositors, whose views show a strong reaction against some extravagances of the two preceding schools. They believe that the whole book, excepting perhaps the first three chapters, refers principally, if not exclusively, to events which are yet to come.

Each of these three schemes is open to objection. Against the Futurist it is argued, that it is not consistent with the repeated declarations of a speedy fulfillment at the beginning and end of the book itself (see ch. 1: 3; 22: 6, 7, 12, 20). Christians, to whom it was originally addressed, would have derived no special comfort from it, had its fulfulfillment been altogether deferred for so many centuries. The rigidly literal interpretation of Babylon, the Jewish tribes, and other symbols, which generally forms a part of Futurist schemes, presents peculiar difficulties. Against the Præterist expositors it is urged that prophecies fulfilled ought to be rendered so perspicuous to the general sense of the Church as to supply an argument against infidelity: that the destruction of Jerusalem, having occurred twenty-five years previously, could not occupy a large space in prophecy; that the supposed predictions of the downfall of Jerusalem and of Nero appear from the context to refer to one event, but are by this scheme separated, and moreover placed in a wrong order; that the measuring of the temple and the altar, and the death of the two witnesses (ch. 11), can not be explained consistently with the context. Against the Historical scheme it is urged that its advocates differ very widely among themselves; that they assume without any authority that the 1,260 days are so many years; that several of its applications—e. g., of the symbol of the ten-borned beasts to the Popes, and the sixth seal to the conversion of Constantine—are inconsistent with the context; that attempts by some of this school to predict future events by the help of the Revelation have ended in repeated failures. A suggestion is made, or rather revived, by Dr. Arnold in his Sermons “On the Interpretation of Prophecy”: that we should bear in mind that predictions have a lower historical sense as well as a higher spiritual sense; that there may be more than one typical, imperfect, historical fulfillment of a prophecy, in each of which the higher spiritual fulfillment is shadowed forth more or less distinctly. The recognition of this would pave the way for the acceptance in a modified sense of many of the interpretations of the historical school, and would not exclude the most valuable portions of the other schemes. S.

6. The Series of “Sevens” mainly Parallel, not Consecutive.—Prominent in the book are certain septenary series. One of these—that of the seven thunders—is not declared, but “sealed up,” and, therefore, not to be interpreted. But the four great series are declared—viz., the seven churches addressed; seven seals broken; seven trumpets blown; seven bowls poured out. Does each series, taken by itself, indicate a course of consecutive events? And do the various series follow each other in a direct line of time, so as to form, in anticipation, a continuous history of the Church? The annals of Christendom refuse to arrange themselves in harmony with such a theory of the Apocalypse. It has been attempted to assign the seven seals to Rome Pagan, the seven trumpets to Rome Christian, and the seven bowls of wrath to Rome antichristian. It has been held that the seals denote the overthrow of heathenism, and the success of the Emperor Constantine; that the trumpets announce the irruption of the northern barbarians, and the ruin of the Moslem power; and that the bowls of wrath began to be poured out at the French revolution in the end of the last century, and are being poured out still. But it is a vain and desperate attempt to lay these prophetic series alongside of the actual annals of Europe. The effort to arrange such history in three or four grand divisions, and subdivide into twenty-one or twenty-eight successive epochs, has led, on the one hand, to such puerile handling of Scripture, and, on the other, to such capricious and arbitrary emphasizing of particular events and dates, as is positively repulsive to a sober and reverent mind. Better the most vague and hazy conception of the contents of this Book, if accompanied by some recognition of its poetic grandeur, than a prosaic interpretation brought about by fixing, in the most arbitrary way, on particular passages of European history, slighting other events perhaps quite as important as those which are selected, and passing over centuries in silence.

There is a parallelism between some of the series in question that points to a conclusion quite at variance with the theory of historic continuity. This is particularly obvious in the case of the series of trumpets as compared with that of vials or bowls. They go over the same course of events, and are synchronous, not successive. The latter reiterates the lessons and warnings of the former, according to that fashion of doubling or repeating the sense which belongs to Hebrew poetry, proverb, prophecy, and dream. Who can read Old Testament prophecy and psalm without being struck by the use made of refrain and iteration? And why should we not see in the duplicate dreams of Joseph and of Pharaoh, and in the virtual repetition of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of successive empires in a dream of Daniel, a hint of the manner in which the visions of John are connected together, and ought to be interpreted? In fact, the prophetic movement is not in straight lines from one date to another, but in mighty cycles or wheels, more or less coincident; and one may say of them in the words of Ezekiel, “As for the rings, they were so high that they were dreadful.” But it is not meant that one cycle is a mere repetition of another. There is eschatological progress. There is an indication of growing intensity of good and evil. The tragic element especially becomes more prominent; and with increasing severity, each series or cycle of judgment moves the world further on toward the last judgment in the great day of God. D. F.

In sorting the prophecies of Scripture with their events, we must allow for that latitude which is agreeable and familiar unto divine prophecies, being of the nature of the Author, with whom “a thousand years are but as one day”; and, therefore, they are not fulfilled punctually at once, but have springing and germinant accomplishment throughout many ages, though the height or fullness of them may refer to some one age. Bacon.—We may be honestly persuaded that the proper key to the full scientific and historical understanding of this remarkable book has not yet been found, without thereby being obliged in the least to doubt its divine origin and high, practical value. It belongs, in fact, to the nature of every divine prophecy to unveil itself but gradually, and to be fully intelligible only in the light of its fulfillment. So the prophetic writings of the Old Testament remained half understood or misunderstood till the appearance of Christ; as in fact the whole Old Testament becomes clear only in the New. Nay, even the apostles were long entangled in all sorts of carnal prejudices. It was only by degrees, and under the special guidance of their Master, that they rose to a deeper spiritual knowledge of the Messianic promises. Nevertheless, to souls anxiously waiting for the salvation of Israel these prophecies, though in many points misapprehended, were an inexhaustible source of spiritual strength, comfort, and refreshment. Precisely the same may be said of the last strains of the beloved disciple, in which at the close of the apostolic age, and the century of miracles, soaring yet once more on eagle’s wings to behold the eternal triumph of his divine Master and the glory of the bride “adorned for her husband” on the sanctified earth, he bequeathed to the church militant these precious visions under the seal of the Holy Ghost, as a cordial for all her hours of temptation and affliction. As such the Apocalypse has already been in fact of the most valuable service to the people of God; during the bloody persecutions by the Roman power in the first three centuries; at the descent of the barbarian herdes amid the storms of the migration; under the conquests of Mohammedanism; and in every heavy calamity and persecution which has since befallen the Church. Hence also its significance did not cease with the dissolution of the old Roman heathenism, any more than did the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies stop with the events of Jewish history to which they primarily refer. The age of the Neronian and Dominican persecutions is not the goal, but only the historical starting-point of the Apocalypse, and the basis of its interpretation. As the kingdom of Christ advances, so rises also the empire of Antichrist and false prophecy in ever new and more dangerous forms; and every new conflict of the two and every new victory follows the same general laws, and forms a new and higher fulfillment of the prophecy. P. S.

7. Of Symbols. Most copious and varied are the Apocalyptic symbols; and they must be carefully studied, and consistently and soberly interpreted. There are symbols in numbers, e. g.: 4, the number of the earth, or mundane space; 4 quarters, 4 winds, etc. 7, the number of completion and of rest. Its half, 3½, is the sign of broken and limited operation; but when a divine cycle of creative work or providential government is indicated it is marked by 7. The sign of protracted labor, never reaching rest, is 666, the number of the wild beast. 10, the number of the world’s activity and development. Therefore, both in the Book of Daniel and here, a world-power has 10 horns. 12, the number of Church order and plenitude; 12 stars, 12 gates, 12 foundations, 12 apostles, 12 fruit harvests from the tree of life. From 10 and 12 are formed greater numbers, 1,000, 144, and 144,000.

There are symbols in colors, e. g.: White, denoting purity (white garments), righteousness (a white throne), joy (a white cloud), victory (a white horse). Red, for bloodshed and war. Purple, for imperial luxury and pomp. Emerald green, for patient, winning grace. Black, for calamity and distress.

There are symbols in animated forms: The zoa, composite figures, expressive of the whole life in creation, and the redemption of the whole creation to God. The lamb, a symbol of Jesus Christ, as he once suffered, and is now enthroned. The eagle, indicating swift movements in the region of thought and opinion. Horses, representing movements on the earth. A wild beast, a cruel trampling power. Frogs, unclean spirits. Locusts, all things that waste and torment.

There are symbols in the elements and forces of nature: The air, the sphere of life, and of intellectual and spiritual influence. The earth, the place of nations. An earthquake, sudden shaking of nations. The sea, human society tossed and troubled. A cloud is the chariot of divine manifestation. A storm of lightning and hail denotes a great crisis or

judgment. These are only examples of apocalyptic symbols.