In the same manner, of all the messages to the seven churches in Asia the author of the Revelation says, "He who hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches" (Rev. ii, 7, 11, 17, 29; iii, 6, 13, 22); and of a particularly enigmatic oracle he says, "Let him who hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man" (Rev. xiii, 18); just as of a mysterious reference to Daniel in his prophetic discourse Jesus said, Let him that readeth understand" (Mark xiii, 14). The symbolism, like the ancient mysteries, is for the initiated.

The symbolic visions of Revelation, however, are by no means run-wild or arbitrary. They have their roots in the literature and traditions which from time immemorial have been the education of Jews and Christians; who are already at home in its conceptions and vocabulary. Their design, indeed, is not to propound a mystery but to clear it up: the mystery which, as St. Paul says, "hath been hid for ages and generations: but now is made manifest to his saints, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. i, 26, 27). To the sharing of such visions there is no arbitrary bar. It requires only what is promised to all Christians: the endowment of the Spirit and consciousness of Christ.

When at the outset of his disclosure John writes, "After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven. Figurative (Rev. iv, 1), we have no warrant for deeming and Literal this a literal view into the arcana of the universe, as it were into sensible phenomena. To interpret it so vulgarizes it into a peep show, on a level with alleged psychic disclosures, and raises interminable difficulties, from which the too literal-minded and materialized church has suffered much. Besides, the whole tenor of scripture thought is against it. In remarkable contrast to the speculations of other religions, the Scripture prophets and apostles are reticent about the literal aspects of the unseen and the hereafter. St. Paul relates (2 Cor. xii, 2-4) that he once knew

a man who was caught up to the third heaven; but no description is attempted of what he saw, and what he heard was "unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter"; he was uncertain, indeed, whether the man who saw and heard (he means of course himself) was in the body or out of it. This well represents the sane and reverent attitude of the Christian mind toward another state of being. Its quickened spiritual sense represses a vulgar curiosity.

NOTE. The Finer View. Tennyson, in "In Memoriam,” xxxi–xxxiii, notes this reticence in the case of Lazarus, and the lack of curiosity on the part of Mary, with their effects on religious faith. Of her postulated question to Lazarus,

९९

Where wert thou, brother, those four days?"

(cf. John xi. 39) the poet remarks,

There lives no record of reply

Which telling what it is to die

Had surely added praise to praise ...
Behold a man raised up by Christ!

The rest remaineth unreveal'd;

He told it not, or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.

The same reticence is shown with regard to the Supreme Being. The circumstances of the vision may require that He be identified, as is the case in the visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Apocalyptist; but Isaiah sees only His skirts filling the Temple (Isa. vi, 1); Ezekiel describes only a mystic human form in terms of fire and color (Ezek. i, 26, 27); and John, when he first mentions the occupant of, the "great white throne," describes Him merely as resembling precious stones (Rev. iv, 3), and later as One "from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away (Rev. xx, 11). Evidently it is not intended that the pictured scenery and activities of the unseen state of being should be taken literally.

But this does not imply that these things are unreal. They deal rather with the inner truth of things than with

their visualized appearance. The fact that they are described in symbol is a virtual confession that they are so crowded with spiritual meanings that no one sensible object and no single figure can express them. Take as illustration one of the simplest, the first description of the Son of Man in glory (Rev. i, 13-16). The form, in its splendor of light and flame, is not greatly unlike what the three disciples saw on the Mount of Transfiguration (cf. Mark ix, 3). But when there are added stars in his hand, and a sword coming from his mouth (cf. Isa. xi, 4; xlix, 2), we must have recourse to symbol to preserve its verisimilitude. The same may be said of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, identical with the Lamb "as it had been slain," who prevailed to open the seals of the book (Rev. v, 5, 6). As symbol it is sublime and luminously significant; and only so. To go on with other familiar symbols, like the great white throne, the city four-square, the streets of gold, the gates of pearl, the river of the water of life, the book of life, is to reach the same result. Not only do we know what they mean, but they raise in our minds a sense of sublimity, purity, and perfection of being, such as no literal words could express, and perhaps no other figures. To deem the book unreal because it is symbolical is but to confess one's own spiritual density and limitation.

It is important to keep in mind that this Book of Revelation stands at the end, the culminating point, of the Bible. A worldSymbol and long history has preceded it, and a coördinated History literature many centuries in the making history and literature charged throughout with prophetic values. It leaves us with a new chapter of history opened, in which the same spiritual forces here revealed are going on to new conquests and triumphs until the last great battle is fought and the Christ is fully come. Generations and ages are yet to inscribe their names and deeds in a new Book of Life (cf. Rev. xx, 12); for the end of the Bible is not conceived

as an end but as a beginning. That an author like John should thus take his stand between the old and the new, at once summarizing and forecasting such a vast world movement, nothing less or other than a most intrepid symbolism, like a crowded yet creative stenography, could suffice. His ideas must be projected on an immense scale; must cover a limitless range; must withal have the unity and consistency of one work of literary art. It is a stupendous undertaking.

Accordingly, he writes as an heir of the literary ages before him. The Revelation of John may be regarded as a clearing house of the symbolic language which has been used to convoy the history of God's work and purpose hitherto. Several of the old prophets, notably Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel, have employed the idiom freely; not to speak of the numerous apocalyptic touches scattered through all the Old Testament prophecy and poetry. The Book of Isaiah, as we have seen, resolves itself into a "vision" (Isa. i, 1) of a whole prophetic era, beginning with a people on the verge of doom and ending with the promise of new heavens and a new earth. There is this to be noted, however, of the Old Testament symbolism: it is nearer to the literal, it works itself out in terms of historic forces and redeeming personalities here on this earth. It belongs rather to the era of prophecy than of fulfillment, to a state of things confessedly unfinal. And so, along with its religious values may be read the practical values of statesmanship, social righteousness, and law; with all of which the symbolism is vitally involved.

All these survive and find their place in this clearing house of symbolic values. Many of John's images are modeled on imagery already made familiar in prophetic history. The four living creatures, the dragon, the monstrous beast, the enslaving harlot, the field of Armageddon, Gog and Magog, reappear and have their ordained function in this summarizing book. But not only are these inherited

symbols endowed with a larger and broader meaning. To them the author adds also a rich store of new symbolism suited to the new field of prophecy here opening. For he is concerned with the principles and events of unseen and eternal realms; his history moves in both earth and heaven; and to it not human powers and personalities alone are adequate, but only the divine-human power and personality of Jesus Christ. In him all centers and culminates, not in any lower agency or dignity however celestial. When the conflicts are over and the redeemed raise their song of salvation, John is moved to worship the angel who has commissioned him to write. "And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he saith unto me, 'See thou do it not; I am a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy'" (Rev. xix, 10).

III

The Reality within the Symbol. One consequence of the enigmatic character of the Revelation is that no other book of the Bible has so provoked speculation as to the literal reality underlying its daring symbolism. What, in identifiable terms, were the things which John said "must shortly come to pass"? The book has been the feeding ground of countless inquiries and conjectures, many of them deeply erudite and ingenious, all more or less futile. Their fallacy lies in their own cultural or personal equation. Either they seek to imprison its meanings in the particular generation for which the prophet wrote or else some later historical condition bulks so large in their interpretative system that the prophecy, however remote its composition, seems to have been made especially for it. The former view cramps and specializes the book too narrowly to its own age. The latter lays it open to wild theories, putting it at the mercy of speculative cranks. Against both St. Peter's