Revelation 1

In its symbolism, and in the whole tenor of its prophecy, this book rests on visions of an earlier date, especially those imparted to Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. It is vain to attempt an interpretation of it without considerable familiarity with the Old Testament, for, though written in Greek, the book is entirely Hebrew in its images and allusions.

There is also a very marked connection with that prophecy of the Master Jesus Christ which he poured into the ears of his disciples on the Mount of Olives. In particular, there is the same scenic or panoramic combination of events remote from each other, but having the same character and intention. Two, if not more, horizons of judgment are in view at once, the nearer a foreshadow of the more distant. D. F.

1. THE Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his 2 servant John: who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, 3 and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. 4 JOHN to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are be- 5 fore his throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the firstbegotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us 6 from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Fa- 7 ther; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of 8 the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. 9 I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and 10 for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind 11 me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto 12 Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that spake 13 with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, 14 and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, 15 as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as 16 if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his 17 countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and 18 the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; 19 and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the 20 things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

EVERY blessing that belongs to our inheritance centers in this great truth, that he “who was dead” is now “alive for evermore.” In him newly born, we in him die, rise, and ascend; our life is the reflection of his; if spiritually quickened by him, we too, like him, are even now, and hereafter are destined yet more gloriously to be, “alive for evermore”! “For evermore”! Words easily uttered, but in comprehension vaster than human thought can grasp, till man, entering upon eternity, shall rise to faculties fitted for the scene! “For evermore”: for an existence to which the age of the earth, of the starry heavens, of the whole vast universe, is less than a morning dream; for a life which, after the reiteration of millions of centuries, shall begin the endless race with the freshness of infancy, and all the eagerness that welcomes enjoyments ever new. The blight of all our earthly pleasures is decay; our suns have scarcely risen when they set; we have but just persuaded ourselves that we are happy when the happiness is vanished. Pining after something that will endure, we are not to be for ever disappointed. Born for eternity, eternity shall surely be ours. But oh! agony insufferable, if the eternal life of Christ—the Christian’s warrant of justification, of sanctity, of happiness—be but the guarantee of a death as everlasting as his everlasting life.

The time shall come—we know not when, we know not how—but come it shall, when every deathless spirit shall awake to the world of deathless retribution, and each shall utter for himself the words of Christ: “Behold, I am alive for evermore!” How such words shall be uttered, with the anguish of anticipated woe, with the remembrance of years misspent, warnings despised, opportunities neglected, or with the blessed recollection of faith unwavering amid a hostile world, of tempers meek and loving in despite of all its bitterness, of temptations met and vanquished, of services that, never indeed sufficient, were still sincere—those humble but rapturous recollections that in their fearful joy are bright already with the glory they herald: which shall be our destiny when that long-promised morn shall have dawned, as under God it lies with ourselves, may God in his mercy enable us wisely to resolve! W. A. B.

1. “The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants the things which must come to pass,” is a repetition and a particular application of that assurance on which all the gospel rests, “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.” Even the visible discovery of this fact is not withheld. If Paul, as the great expositor of the present spiritual life, had seen Jesus Christ himself, and received immediately from the Lord that which he had delivered unto men, so John, as the prophet of the things to come, saw the well-remembered form again, surrounded with the symbols of majesty and judgment, and looked upon his countenance, now like the sun shining in his strength, and heard his voice as the sound of many waters. Thus the continuity of the line of prophecy within the canonical books is made as clear as that of the line of doctrine; both commencing in the words of Jesus in the flesh, both perfected by the words of Jesus in the Spirit. T. D. B.—The truth brought into the world by the Son does not consist of new metaphysical ideas about God, but rather of the revelation of his Father character. To make this revelation, it was sufficient for Jesus to reveal himself as the Son; for to prove himself Son is to teach the world what it never would have suspected—that God is essentially a Father. And if he is Father in his inmost essence, and in virtue of an eternal relation, how could his relations to his creatures fail to have also a paternal character? Such is the new explanation which the Son has given of the divine being, and which he alone as the Son could give. It is the initiation of the earth into the deepest secret of heaven: God is from all eternity Father—that is to say, love. Godet.

4. The seven churches of Asia. The “Asia” of the New Testament is not the continent of Asia nor “Asia Minor,” but a Roman province which embraced the western part of the peninsula of Asia Minor, and of which Ephesus was the capital. It was a senatorial province, and was governed by a proconsul. Among its many important cities were those of the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse. It included the territory subdivided into Mysia, Lydia, and Caria. It is referred to in Acts 2: 9;

6: 9; 19: 26; and 1 Pet. 1: 1. Note the position of the Seven Churches on map, page 94. B.

Grace unto you and peace. This opening salutation may fitly remind us (for in reading the Apocalypse we are often in danger of forgetting it) that the book is an Epistle, that besides containing within its bosom those seven briefer Epistles addressed severally to the Seven Churches in particular, it is itself an Epistle addressed to them as a whole, and as representing in their mystic unity all the Churches, or the Church.

By “the seven Spirits” we must understand, not indeed the sevenfold operations of the Holy Ghost, but the Holy Ghost sevenfold in his operations; “that doth his sevenfold gifts impart.” He is regarded here not so much in his personal unity as in his manifold energies; just as light, being one, does yet in the prism separate itself into its seven colors; for “there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1 Cor. 12: 4). The manifold gifts, operations, energies of the Holy Ghost are here represented under the number seven, being, as it is, the number of completeness in the Church. We have anticipations of this in the Old Testament.

5. Christ is indeed “the first begotten of the dead,” notwithstanding that such raisings from the grave as that of the widow’s son, and Jairus’s daughter, and Lazarus, and his who revived at the touch of Elisha’s bones (2 K. 13: 21), went before. None of them could be truly said to be “begotten from the dead,” but rather begotten to die again; for to be born and begotten from the dead includes an everlasting freedom from the power and approach of death.

“Unto him that hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.” The words are richer still in comfort, when we read, as we ought, “Unto him that loves us,” whose love rests evermore on his redeemed. T.—This is the current phraseology of the Scriptures. It is the burden of prophecy. It pervades and vitalizes the whole Levitical ritual. It is the constant teaching of the Redeemer himself. It is the harmonious, joyful testimony of the apostles. It is the sublime song of the redeemed in heaven. All, all concur in declaring that Christ died to redeem his people from the curse of the law, and make them kings and priests unto God his Father. H. A. B.

There is no such thing as age in his sacrifice; centuries can not give antiquity to his atonement; time can not wear out its virtues. His blood is as precious now as when it first was shed, and the fountain for sin and uncleanness flows with a stream as full and purifying as when first it was opened. And how? Simply because by his intercession he perpetuates his sacrifice; and his offering, though not repeated on earth, is incessantly presented in heaven. It was enough that he should once die to make atonement, seeing he ever lives to make intercession. He is now carrying on in heaven the very office and work which he commenced when upon earth; and, though there is no visible altar and no literal sacrifice, no endurance of anguish and no shedding of blood, yet still he presents vividly and energetically the marks of his passion, and the effect is the same as though he died daily, and acted over again and again the scene of his tremendous conflict with “the powers of darkness.” E. M.

6. “To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” A fuller doxology, being threefold, occurs 4: 9, 11; and a fuller yet, being fourfold, at 5: 13; and the fullest of all, the sevenfold doxology, at 7: 12. A study of these would serve to remind us of the prominence which the doxological element assumes in the highest worship of the Church, the very subordinate place which it oftentimes takes in ours. We can make our requests known unto God, and this is well, for it is prayer; but to give glory to God, quite apart from anything to be directly gotten by ourselves in return, to thank God for his great glory, this is better, for it is adoration; but, if better, it is rarer as well. T.

7. The book, being entitled the Unveiling of Jesus Christ, opens with this announcement of his appearing: “Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him; and whosoever they were that pierced him; and all tribes of the earth shall wail because of him.” We seem to hear again the words of our Lord in that great prophecy which he pronounced while he sat on the Mount of Olives a day or two before his death—a prophecy which underlies much of the phraseology of this book: “Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Mat. 24: 30). D. F.—Shall wail. These words set forth the despair of the sinful world, of “all the tribes of the earth,” when Christ the Judge shall come to execute judgment on all that obeyed not his gospel, who pierced him with their sins; they describe their remorse and despair, but give no hint of their repentance. The closing words, “Even so, Amen,” are to be taken as God’s own seal and ratification of his own word. T.—The crucifiers of every age and nation shall shrink in horror and dread before the blaze of his advent glory! In that fearful hour, how happy, beyond all that thought can conceive or words declare, for those who, familiar with the cross, can look upon it, not as the symbol of the sorrow and shame they have willingly inflicted, but as the symbol of sufferings in which they were willingly united with their Master, with him crucified, that they may be with him glorified, his blessed associates in the bliss unspeakable of his own immortal kingdom! W. A. B.

9. The kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. Kingdom and patience! as if in Jesus Christ were made compatible authority and suffering, the impassive throne of a monarch and the meek subjection of a cross, the reigning power of a prince and the mild endurance of a lamb. What more striking paradox! And yet in this you have exactly that which is the prime distinction of Christianity. It is a kingdom erected by patience. It reigns in virtue of submission. Its victory and dominion are the fruits of a most peculiar and singular endurance. By this I mean not the reward, but the proper results or effects of endurance. Christ reigns over human souls and in them, erecting there his spiritual kingdom, not by force of will exerted in any way, but through his most sublime passivity in yielding himself to the wrongs and the malice of his adversaries. And with him, in this most remarkable peculiarity, all disciples are called to be partakers; even as the apostle in his exile at Patmos writes: “I John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus.” H. B.

Patmos. One of the group called the Sporades, lying twenty-four miles off the coast of Asia Minor, southwest of Ephesus. It is now called Patino, and is about twenty-five miles in circumference, and has only about six hundred inhabitants. D. F.—“I John was,” or rather “became a dweller,” “in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” He stood on the heights of Patmos in the center of a world of his own. The island, then probably less inhabited than now, was almost a solitude. “He was in the Spirit,” withdrawn from earthly things, like Moses on Sinai, or Elijah on Carmel. But the view from the topmost peak, or, indeed, from any lofty elevation in the island, unfolds an unusual sweep, such as well became the “Apocalypse,” the “unveiling” of the future to the eyes of the solitary seer. It was “a great and high mountain,” whence he could see things to come. Above, there was always the broad heaven of a Grecian sky; sometimes bright, with its “white cloud,” sometimes torn with “lightnings and thunderings,” and darkened by “great hail,” or cheered with “a rainbow like unto an emerald.” Over the high tops of Icaria, Samos, and Naxos rise the mountains of Asia Minor, among which would lie, to the north, the circle of the Seven Churches to which his addresses were to be sent. Around him stood the mountains and islands of the archipelago—“every mountain and island shall be moved out of their places”; “every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.” When he looked around, above or below, “the sea” would always occupy the foremost place. He saw “the things that are in the heavens and in the earth and in the sea.” The angel was “not to hurt the earth or the sea,” nor “to blow on the earth or on the sea.” “A great mountain,” like that of the volcanic Thera, “as it were burning with fire,” was “to be cast into the sea.” The angel was to stand with “his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth”; “the vial was to be poured out upon the sea”; the voices of heaven were like the sound of the waves beating

Patmos.

on the shore, as “the sound of many waters”; “the millstone was cast into the sea”; “the sea was to give up the dead which were in it”; and the time would come when this wall of his imprisonment, which girdled round the desolate island, should have ceased; “there shall be no more sea.” Such was the scene of the Apocalypse, varied, doubtless, by other images drawn from the prophetic books of the older Scriptures, and from the report or the actual sight of the great cities of the earth. We understand the Apocalypse better for having seen Patmos. But we can understand the Gospel and Epistles of John as well in England as in Patmos or Ephesus, or even in his own native Palestine. A. P. S.

10. On the Lord’s day.** Though the name, “the Lord’s day,” probably had here its rise, the thing, the celebration of the first day of the week as that on which the Lord brake the bands of death and became the head of a new creation, was as old as Christianity itself. T.—The Jewish Sabbath was partly of political institution and partly of moral obligation. So far as it was a political appointment, designed to preserve the Jews distinct from other nations, it is abrogated; so far as it was of moral obligation, it remains in force. Our Lord evidently designed to relax the strictness of the observance. Christianity is not a hedge placed round a peculiar people. A slave might enter into the spirit of Christianity, though obliged to work as a slave on the Sabbath; he might be “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” though in the mines of Patmos. Cecil.

11. These seven words of warning and encouragement so penetrated to the heart of things that, meeting the needs of these seven Churches, they also met the needs of all others subsisting in similar or nearly similar conditions. Typical and representative Churches, these embodied, one or another of them, I will not say all the great leading aspects of the Church in its faithfulness or its unfaithfulness, but they embodied a great many, the broadest and the oftenest recurring. The seven must in this point of view be regarded as constituting a complex whole, as possessing an ideal completeness. T.

12. What the apostle saw was not seven candlesticks, which are a modern piece of furniture, but seven lamps. There is a distinct reference in this, as in all the symbols of the Apocalypse, to the Old Testament. We know that in the Jewish Temple there stood, as an emblem of Israel’s work in the world, the great seven-branched candlestick burning for ever before the veil and beyond the altar. The difference between the two symbols is as obvious as their resemblance. The ancient lamp had all the seven bowls spring from a single stem. It was a formal unity. The New Testament seer saw not one lamp with seven arms rising from one pillar, but seven distinct lamps—the emblems of a unity which was not formal, but real. They were one in their perfect manifoldness, because of him who walked in the midst. In which difference lies a representation of one great element in the superiority of the Church over Israel, that for the hard material oneness of the separated nation there has come the true spiritual oneness of the Churches of the saints, one not because of any external connection, but, by reason that Christ is in them. The seven-branched lamp lies at the bottom of the

Tiber. There let it lie. We have a better thing, in these manifold lights, which stand before the Throne of the New Temple, and blend into one, because lighted from one Source, fed by one Spirit, tended and watched by one Lord. A. M.

The Jewish Church was one, for it was the Church of a single people; the Christian Church, that too is one, but it is also many—at once the “Church” and the “Churches.” These may be quite independent of one another, the only bond of union with one another which they absolutely require being that of common dependence on the same head, and derivation of life from the same spirit, and are fitly represented by seven, the number of mystical completeness. In the image itself by which the churches are symbolized there is an eminent fitness. The candlestick, or lampstand, as we must rather conceive it here, is not light, but it is the bearer of light, that which diffuses it, that which holds it forth and causes it to shine throughout the house, being the appointed instrument for this. It is thus with the Church. God’s word, God’s truth, including in this all which he has declared of himself in revealed religion, is light; the Church is the light-bearer, light in the Lord (Eph. 5: 8), not having light of its own, but diffusing that which it receives of him. Each too of the faithful in particular, after he has been illuminated (Heb. 6: 4), is a bearer of the light; “lights in the world, holding forth the word of life” (Phil. 2: 15).

13-16. With the Hebrew symbolism the first necessity is that the symbol should set forth truly and fully the religious idea of which it is intended to be the vehicle. Thus the New Jerusalem “lieth foursquare; the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal” (21: 16). A city, constituting thus a perfect cube, is simply inconceivable to us; but the divine seer did not care that we should conceive it; he was only careful to express the fact that this was a city which should never be moved. In this as in so many other cases, how the idea would appear when it clothed itself in an outward form and shape, whether it could clothe itself in this at all, and, if it could, whether it would find favor and allowance at the bar of taste, as satisfying the conditions of beauty, this was quite a secondary consideration. Nay, we may affirm that this was not a consideration at all; for indeed, with the one exception of the cherubim, there was no intention that the symbol should embody itself outwardly, but rather that it should remain ever and only a purely mental conception, the unembodied sign of an idea;—I may observe, by the way, that no skill of delineation can make the cherubim themselves other than unsightly objects to the eye. Thus in this present description of Christ, sublime and majestic as it is beyond all conception of ours, it is only such so long as we keep it wholly apart from any external embodiment. T.—It was a “mystery” full of voice, full of light; and he who filled it was girt in the robe and golden zone of divine beauty and gracefulness. It was full of voice for teaching, and of light for illumination; and the garment which was girt there was as a vesture of righteousness, zoned with truth. Its voice was as “many waters” for sounding forth, and as “a two-edged sword” for piercing; its light was as a flame of fire for searching, and as the sun in his strength for shedding perfect day; and its garment was as holiness for an enrobing glory, and as truth for a girdle of gracious beauty. Such was the wondrous symbol in its dress: one like unto the son of man, standing in the midst of seven golden candlesticks, and holding in his hand seven shining stars: more glorious in array than words could describe, and more powerful for operation than thought could conceive. What, then, was the symbol in its signification? Not Christ’s flesh and blood commingled and co-united with the bodies and souls of individual Christians, effecting thus a perpetual and living incarnation of himself; but Christ, showing his relation to his light-bearing churches, and to those true ministers whom he upholds with his right hand, and who, as starry lights, catch and cast forth through his churches upon the world his own glorious effulgence of saving truth and life. “The seven stars,” said the interpreting form, in the very idiom of Christ’s native tongue as he spake on earth—“the seven stars are (represent) the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks are (represent) the seven churches.” This, then, was not Christ incarnate in a darkly incomprehensible symbol; but it was the most gorgeously luminous symbol ever conceived of Christ and his churches; of Christ upholding his true ministers with his right hand; speaking through them his two-edged word of life, in sounds terribly piercing to the sinner, and affectingly solemn to the saint; and casting, through them on the churches, and through the churches on the wide world, the effulgent daylight of his own saving truth. This was “the mystery,” the meaning, of the symbol. It was a mystery, not because it was incomprehensible, but because it was rich in a meaning designed to be understood, and luminously intelligible the moment the word of interpretation was spoken.

In this symbolic mystery, Christ sets forth to all ages the relation which he holds to his Church, as one whole, composed of many branches; exhibiting himself as the source and upholder of its ministry, the source and dispenser of its light; its centrally supreme and governing head, directing its movements in the divinely merciful work of slaying sin, and of spreading both the light of truth and the garment of holiness over all the earth. And this relation of Christ to his Church, this agency of Christ through his Church, must become more and more perfectly apprehended and appreciated. His Church must carry less and less of the darkness of superstitious mystery, and more and more of the light of evangelic mystery; till finally, what was represented to the lesser Asia by the mystic circle of the seven golden candlesticks, with their accompanying seven shining stars, shall have widened and thrown its circumference around the globe; becoming thus the one Church of all lands, and, with its numberless stellar angels, making universal the light both of the knowledge and of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. J. S. S.

13. The beloved Apostle by this “like unto the Son of man” would imply that in this sublime apparition he recognized him whom he had once known on earth, the born of the Virgin Mary; who even then had claimed to be executor of all judgment, because he was the Son of man. 14. His eyes as a flame of fire. The words do not say merely that nothing can escape his searching, penetrative glance; they express the indignation of the Holy One at the discoveries of evil which he thus makes. These “eyes of fire” do not merely look through the hypocrite and the sinner, but consume him, him and his sins together—unless indeed he will suffer them to consume his sins, that so he may live. For indeed in the symbolism of Scripture fire is throughout the expression of the divine anger; and, seeing that nothing moves that anger but sin, of the divine anger against sin. 15. “His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace.” This grand and terrible image sets forth to us Christ in his power to tread down his enemies; at once to tread down and to consume them. T.

16. He it is who holds the stars in his right hand, and walks among the candlesticks. That strong grasp of that mighty hand—for the word in the original conveys more than “holds,” it implies a tight and powerful grip—sustains and guards his servants, whose tasks need special grace, and whose position exposes them to special dangers. They may be of good cheer, for none shall pluck them out of his hand. That strengthening and watchful presence moves among his churches, and is active on their behalf. The symbols are but the pictorial equivalent of his own parting promise, “Lo, I am with you always!” A. M.

17. Though John was in the Spirit when he had the vision of Christ, yet it made him fall at his feet as dead; and also turned Daniel’s beauty into corruption, it was so glorious and so overweighing a glory that he appeared in. But we shall at the day of our resurrection be so furnished that we shall with the eagle be able to look upon the sun in his strength. We shall then “see him as he is,” who now is in the light that no eye hath seen, nor any man can see till that day. Dan.

The very majesty of his celestial state, far from forming a ground of separation, seems made the ground of consolation and confidence to his poor disciples; when John sank in lifeless terror before the apparition of his glorified Master, the divine visitant did not abridge the splendors of his presence, but gave the disciple strength to endure them; to allay the shrinking apostle’s fears. He did not speak of past humiliation, but of present glory. He did not diminish, but assert, the full magnificence of his claims, and fixed them as the basis of a high and holy trust. “Fear not! I am the First and the Last!” W. A. B.—This prerogative is three times claimed for the Lord Jehovah in Isaiah; and in like manner three times in this Book. It is the expression of absolute Godhead: “I am the first and the last, and beside me there is no God” (Isa. 44:6). He is from eternity to eternity, so that there is no room for any other. All creation comes forth from him, and returns to him again, as from whom and by whom and to whom are all things. T.

18. “I am he that liveth.” That word, “liveth,” is a word of continuous, perpetual life. It describes the eternal existence which has no beginning and no end; which, considered in its purity and perfectness, has no present and no past, but one eternal and unbroken present—one eternal now. It is the “I am” of the Jehovah who spoke to Moses. “He that liveth” is the Living One; he whose life is the Life complete in itself, and including all other lives within itself. Those years shut in out of the eternities between the birth and the ascension, that resurrection opening the prospect of that life which never was to end—these are the never-failing interpretation to the man who believes in them of the temporal and eternal in his own experience. Christ comes and puts his essential life into our human form. In that form he claims the truest brotherhood with us. He shares our lot. He binds his life with ours so that they can never be separated. What he is, we must be; what we are, he must be for ever. By the cross of love, he, entering into our death, takes us completely into his life. And when he had done all this he rose. Out of his tomb, standing there among human tombs, he comes, and lo, before him there rolls on the unbroken endlessness of being. And not before him alone—before those also whom he had taken so completely to himself. His resurrection makes our resurrection sure. Our earthly life, like his, becomes an episode, a short, special, temporary thing, when it is seen like his against an immortality. P. B.

It is the mystery of redemption that establishes a truth so astounding as that man is to live for ever by placing it in a subordinate position to the still more amazing truth of the union of the divine and human natures in the person of the Mediator. Our Lord, in his private conversations with his disciples, avails himself of the stores of tropical expression for the purpose of fixing in their minds the belief of an intimate and indissoluble union between themselves and him. The Author of Immortality, resplendent in his title as “Prince of Life,” “the Living One,” he who “has life in himself,” who is abstractedly “the Life and the Light of Men,” and is “alive for evermore”; and “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever”; the possessor of all duration, “whose goings forth have been from everlasting; whose name is Father of Eternity”; he who thus draws to himself all honors as Fountain of Existence, sums up every other assurance, when he tells his followers that, “BECAUSE HE LIVES, THEY SHALL LIVE ALSO,” as if formally to pledge his own immortality for theirs; or, as if they might fear extinction, when he, the Lord of Life, should be no more. I. T.

18. “And have the keys of hell and of death.” We should read rather “of death and of hell,” for so all the best manuscripts and versions have it. In the natural and logical order it is death which peoples hell or hades; it is a king Death who makes possible a kingdom of the dead (6:8; 20:13, 14); for by “hell” or hades this invisible kingdom or domin-

ion of the dead is intended, and that in all its extent, not merely in one dark province of it, the region assigned to the lost. All who have thoughtfully compared our version with the original must regret that the one word “hell” covers in it two words so different in meaning as hades and gehenna, the first “Sheol,” the gathering-place of all departed souls (Prov. 27: 20), the second the lake of fire of this book (19: 20; 20: 10), the final abode of the lost. All must lament the manifold confusions which out of this have arisen; the practical loss, indeed, among our people of any doctrine about hades at all. The relations of hades to gehenna, and also to paradise, are well put in this extract from Jeremy Taylor: “The word hades signifies indefinitely the state of separation, whether blessed or accursed; it means only ’the invisible place,’ whither whoso descends shall be no more seen. Paradisus and gehenna are the distinct states of hades.” T.—Hades is the world unseen, which has its door or portal by which men enter into it. Death is the departure from the seen world, which seen world has its door of exit by which men pass out of it. Hence death is called, in two or three passages of Scripture, exodus, or going out. Peter speaks of his exodus, or death; and Moses and Elias, at the Transfiguration, talk with the Lord on the subject of his exodus; a word which our translators have rendered decease. There are many doors or avenues by which men pass out of this life, none of which can be opened except by the key which the risen Son of God holds in his hand. E. M. G.

considered, in the time of the apostles, the second city of Asia, Ephesus holding the first rank. One of its early bishops was Polycarp, who had been the disciple of John. Like Ephesus, it was ruined in the Turkish invasion, yet its admirable situation for commerce revived it, and it is now large and opulent. The Apostolic Church in Smyrna seems to have been harassed by the insults of the Jews, the original persecutors, who retained their hostility and even their power long after the fall of their city. Croly.