The woman arrayed “with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon

her head a crown of twelve stars” (see Genesis xxxvii, 9), represents

the Church collectively and in its most general expression; primarily,

the Jewish Church, inasmuch as Christianity had just begun its mission;

but not confined thereto. Against the Church, against every individual

of it, this murderer and liar from the beginning wages relentless

warfare. His is the power behind all other antagonisms. To devour the

child of the woman in the hour of its birth, to destroy humanity itself

if he can, seems to be the aim of his being. Not a soul is now born

into the kingdom of Christ by regenerating grace but Satan is there to

crush the newly-given life, if possible, in its inception.

When the first gospel of salvation and victory was given to Eve, “Thy

seed shall bruise the serpent’s head,” Satan began his machinations to

defeat the prophecy, even though he knew that he could do no more than

bruise the heel of the promised seed.

When the promise given to Abraham of a posterity countless as the stars

of heaven was about to receive its fulfillment in the extraordinary

fertility of the sons of Jacob in Egypt, it was Satan who inspired

Pharaoh to issue the cruel edict commanding the death of every Hebrew

male child.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea it was the same dragon that

urged Herod to his mad purpose of slaying every young child throughout

its coasts. “This is the heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance

may be ours.”

And it is against this wily foe, “the prince of the power of the air,”

“the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” that we

all have continually to struggle.

For protection against such an adversary there is certainly need of

divine aid. And that help has never been withheld. “There were given

to the woman the two wings of a great eagle.” Is not this an echo of

Exodus xix, 4, “I bare you on eagles’ wings,” and also of Psalm xci, 4,

“And under his wings shalt thou trust”? And in addition to this we

are told that God prepared “a place” in the wilderness where the woman

might fly and be nourished. Does not this refer to Palestine, that

quiet, secluded land, nigh the great highways of the world and yet

aloof from them, where in comparative isolation Israel might develop

her own resources and grow in strength until she should be ready for

her broader mission? If the purpose of the divine Being fell short of

full realization the fault was not his, but hers, through her lust to

be like the surrounding nations.

The numbers, too, representing the period of this seclusion, “twelve

hundred and sixty days,” and “a time, times, and half a time,” are

forms of three and a half, which, as has been said in the Introduction,

symbolizes Judaism, or any cycle with a definite purpose which is,

however, only a half period.

And further confirmation of the reference to the Church of Israel

is found in the allusion to the archangel Michael, who is always

represented in the Scriptures as sustaining some special relation to

Israel (Daniel x, 21; xii, 1).

Yet, mighty as Satan is and venomous as is his hostility, the believer

is endowed with weapons of offense and defense still more potent.

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their

testimony” (or “witness” with reference, doubtless, to the testimony of

the two witnesses of the preceding chapter). In other words, the cross

of Christ and the word of God are the conquering weapons with which

believers win the victory over Satan. The Lord Jesus had most plainly

foretold the secret of victory in the hearing of John when he had said,

“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world

be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all

men unto me.” And, doubtless, these words came with fullness and force

to the memory of the apostle when he heard the “loud voice saying in

heaven, Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God,

and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast

down.”

Not yet, however, is Satan ready to cease his efforts to destroy. He

changes the field of conflict, but does not relinquish the malice of

his assault. If he cannot in heaven, that is, the Church, countervail

the kingdom of Christ, he will attempt it in the earth, on the field

of secular life. “The serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood,

after the woman: that he might cause her to be carried away of the

flood.” There is, perhaps, a reference here to Isaiah lix, 19: “When

the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift

up a standard against him.” Looking back at that chapter, we shall find

that the flood spoken of means an unusual increase of social disorders

and crimes. That is most probably the meaning here. Satan is the foe

alike of God and man. His enmity is directed as much against all order

and morality as against goodness and righteousness. He is that “lawless

one” of whom Paul speaks in 2 Thessalonians ii, 3 (Revised Version). If

he were allowed to carry out his will he would subvert all government,

spiritual or secular. But, says the apostle and seer, “The earth helped

the woman.” For its own protection and existence the State must execute

laws, must preserve order, and must secure itself against anarchy and

unbridled libertinism; and, in so far as it guards social morality, it

fosters spiritual prosperity. In restraining crime and violence it must

needs allow the kingdom of Christ opportunity to grow.

Foiled thus again, Satan does not abandon the conflict, but resorts to

other and more wily means to make war with the “remnant” of the woman’s

seed “which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of

Jesus Christ;” and the history of these efforts must next engage our

attention.

2. _The First Wild Beast, or the Spirit of Worldliness._――In the

chapter of the Revelation which precedes the appearance of the beasts

(Revelation xii, 12) the warning had been given, “Woe to the inhabiters

of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you,

having great wrath.” We are now to witness the fulfillment of this

warning. The apostle saw two wild beasts rise, one from the sea, the

other from the land, both of them formidable foes and intense in their

hostility to the kingdom of Christ. There can hardly be a question but

that these are intended to represent the means by which Satan, thwarted

in his direct assaults, endeavors to carry on his warfare. And just

as Christ, in carrying forward his mediatorial kingdom, makes use of

the two instrumentalities, providence and the written word, so also,

in imitation of him, his fierce antagonist has his two emissaries and

agents. We shall find as we study this part of the Revelation that one

of the most deceptive and dangerous arts which Satan employs is his

manner of counterfeiting the form and aping the methods of Christ, in

hope that he may thereby delude the unsuspecting or heedless. We ought,

therefore, very carefully to note every feature, that we may be able

to detect these dangerous incarnations of the spirit of evil, and thus

escape his snares.

The first wild beast of John’s vision rose from the sea――an expression

which, when used symbolically, designates the secular or temporal

world, in antithesis to the Church. His distinctive characteristics are

intense pride, the possession of vast power, strong vitality enabling

him to recover speedily from severe injuries, insatiable craving after

homage and ability to secure it, outrageous blasphemy, and undisguised

as well as unceasing hostility to Christ and his saints. It is a mooted

question whether by this beast John meant to describe and foretell

the coming of some individual person or some organization of men,

secular or religious, State or Church; or whether the characteristics

he portrays are intended to represent some principle of evil, always

at work, mightier and more enduring than any organization of men, which

manifests itself in various forms and at all times, but transcends all

its manifestations, and against which, because it is one of Satan’s

most successful means of antagonism, every Christian must keep

perpetual watch.

The latter of these hypotheses seems to be more in keeping with the

cast of John’s strongly idealistic and abstract mind, and also with the

purpose of the Apocalypse as intended for the edifying of believers.

And furthermore, as the kingdom of God is not something that cometh

“with observation,” so that men can say of it, “Lo here! or, lo there!”

but is something “within” us, so its opponent is not to be sought in

any particular organization or special event or single individual, but

rather in some abstract principle, all the more dangerous because it

exists separate and distinct from these.

In his description of this wild beast John draws his data from

the prophecy of Daniel; and a study of that book will aid in the

elucidation of this. It is, indeed, true that in the mind of Daniel

the antagonists and allies of God alike assumed the form of kingdoms,

or world powers. But this resulted from the fact that his cast of mind

was essentially concrete, and also because as a statesman and man of

affairs, charged with the administration of finances and politics,

accustomed to the handling of men in collective bodies and to deal with

matters affecting their external relations, his conceptions of religion

regarded rather its outward manifestations than its inward power.

We are not, however, compelled to believe that John, while using the

prophecies of Daniel as his basis, was limited to the conceptions of

the older prophet. He had a better key to the hieroglyphics of the

kingdom and could read their meaning more clearly. Behind the forces

which play their part upon the world’s stage he could recognize the

spiritual principles of which they were incarnations.

The world power which loomed largest to the mind of Daniel, and whose

hostility to the kingdom of Christ was most dreaded by him, was one

that sprang up after the death and among the successors of Alexander

the Great. That extraordinary captain and gifted statesman, the first

ruler who grasped the conception of the essential unity of mankind and

who strove to realize it by the fusion of races into one nation, left

no one at his death capable of comprehending or executing his plans;

and the empire that was formed by his ten generals was a heterogeneous

one, possessing elements both of weakness and strength that were

incapable of being welded into unity. Among the descendants and

successors of these generals was Antiochus Epiphanes, whose hatred

of Judaism amounted to real monomania, and whose insane purpose

to exterminate utterly the customs, usages, religion, and even the

existence of Judaism carried him to such extremes as to arouse a spirit

of revolt which, under the guidance of the Maccabees, defeated his

intent. In him the prophet Daniel foresaw the incarnation of all that

is hostile to Christ and his kingdom.

In the days of John the political sovereignty of the world was wielded

by a still more formidable power, one that combined in itself the

strength of all the four kingdoms of Daniel, uniting the lion, the bear,

and the leopard with the added and imparted authority and power of the

dragon. That power was the Roman Empire, between which and Christianity

had already begun the antagonism which was to leave its decisive and

disastrous effects upon both.

The policy of Rome toward conquered peoples and religions had not

been one, customarily, of harsh severity; indeed, it had been marked

in general by unusual liberality. Having so many gods in her own

Pantheon, it has been said, the addition or subtraction of a few

more or less was hardly worth consideration. But upon one thing Rome

invariably and absolutely insisted――the preservation of public order.

Her administration was one of strict, even stern, paternalism. The

individual existed for the State, and had no rights but such as the

State allowed. The central power did all the thinking; the subject

had only to submit, whatever his personal wishes. Upon the emperor,

as the embodiment of the State, devolved the onerous responsibility of

securing and, if need were, of enforcing peaceful and lawful relations

between men and men. Whenever therefore, the profession of any religion

or the organization of any guild or association interfered with the

prosperity of any branch of trade or commerce or manufacture, the

emperor felt called upon to interpose, in order to redress the injury

caused or wrong suffered thereby. The more conscientious and upright

the emperor, the more he felt the responsibility of administering the

laws; and thus just and righteous rulers, like Trajan and Antoninus and

Marcus Aurelius, were more likely to enforce these rules of order, even

to the point of persecution, than such men as Nero and Caligula and

Domitian, upon whom moral considerations sat loosely.

The early persecutions of Christians sprang out of this fact. There

were things Christian men would not do. They would not eat meat

sacrificed to idols; they would not attend the spectacles of the

theater; they would not worship or own images; and, as the trades and

professions that lived by these things suffered with the increase of

Christians, complaint was made to the emperor, and the power of the

State invoked in behalf of public order. The riot at Ephesus (Acts xix,

23‒41) is a case in illustration.

Very soon, however, the Roman authorities came to see that there was

something back of Christian worship that differentiated it from other

cults. There was a principle of individual liberty, a conviction of

personal freedom, an appreciation of unseen and divine realities which,

if unchecked, threatened the paternalism and the emperor――the worship

of the Cæsars and the continuance of the empire; and so Christians

began to be persecuted simply because they were Christians. Thus began

the antagonism that did not cease until the empire became nominally

Christian, and the Church, striving after the universality of the

empire, became worldly and paternal in its turn. This antagonism John

clearly discerned, and reveals it in the Apocalypse.

But we shall be astray if we conceive that the beast which the

apostle saw symbolized only the Roman or any other empire. There

is an evil principle which was in existence long before that empire

was established, and has continued with unabating energy since its

dissolution; of whose power earthly and worldly kingdoms are but

manifestations; which Satan has employed in all ages as one of his most

successful weapons; and whose deadly hostility to the Christian and the

Church is implacable. It is the principle of worldliness, that spirit

of the world against which the Bible so frequently and faithfully warns

us.

It is not easy to define worldliness. If it could be described

exactly, and its bounds accurately meted, its danger would be greatly

diminished. If we could point to the doing or abstaining from doing

of specified things, or the using or refraining from using of any

particular faculties, and say, “This is worldliness and this only,”

how much easier it would be to avoid it! Worldliness is a principle,

a spirit and temper of the soul. It can find a field for its exercise

anywhere and everywhere, in things essentially good as well as in the

essentially evil. Its intrinsic spirit lies in this――that it disengages

men and things from their normal relation of dependence upon and

subjection to God, and sets them up as rivals to him. It assumes to

displace the Creator from his rightful sovereignty over thoughts and

desires and affections and activities, and transfers allegiance to

some created thing. It substitutes something temporal and earthly for

God and gives to it the worship that belongs undividedly to him. It

manifests itself, John tells us, in “the lust of the flesh, the lust of

the eyes, and the vainglory of life.” This is the spirit of which the

Bible speaks so plainly and forcibly in passages like these: “If the

world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “The

carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of

God, neither indeed can be;” “Know ye not that the friendship of the

world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the

world, is the enemy of God;” “If any man love the world, the love of

the Father is not in him.” And every characteristic of the wild beast

which John saw exhibits this spirit of worldliness. It, and it alone,

exhausts the fullness of the description.

Of this beast which John saw, one of the heads was, as it were,

“wounded [or slain] to death”――the very words which were used in the

description of the Lamb (Revelation v, 6), as if there were in this an

attempted, although feeble, imitation of Christ. Worldliness, too, has

its Calvaries and Gethsemanes; but they fall far short in measure and

in purpose of the great sacrifice of the cross. They are compulsory,

not self-chosen sacrifices; they are not redemptive and substitutional

in their design, but retributive inflictions of divine justice; they

involve but a part of the being, and are not, as was Christ’s offering,

the surrender of the whole self.

Many such wounds has worldliness received. The serpent’s head has been

bruised again and again by the seed of the woman. In the judgments

which have come upon the world throughout the course of its history――in

the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the exodus from

Egypt, the overthrow of Nineveh and Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem――its

spirit has been rebuked, condemned, punished. Indeed, in all the

dissolutions and decay of nature――in the fading of the grass, in the

falling of the flower and of the leaf――the warning is being constantly

given, “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” Most of all,

in the cross of Christ has the world received its deadliest wound. But

how soon is the wound healed, how quickly are the lessons of providence

forgotten! and the tide of worldliness, stayed for a moment, resumes

its volume and rapidity and carries its victims to their destruction.

It is this power of recuperation which contributes to the might of

worldliness and makes it the more dangerous. Success adds to its

fascinations and multiplies its votaries. “All the world wondered

after the beast” whose deadly wound was healed. In comparison with its

triumphs the cross of Christ becomes a stumbling-block to some and

foolishness to others, because of the paucity of its victories. And in

worshiping the beast its followers are scarcely aware, or are oblivious

to the fact, that they are worshiping the dragon himself; for Paul says,

“The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and

not to God.”

Another striking and conspicuous characteristic of the first beast was

his virulent blasphemy. Upon his heads were “the names of blasphemy.”

The voices of his mouth were blasphemy. His fierce, ambitious purpose

to displace God and usurp his throne――and this is what the Bible

defines blasphemy to be――moved him to demand such homage as can be

given rightly to God alone, and to set up his own tabernacle and name

as competitors with God’s. Is not this descriptive of the spirit of

worldliness? How exacting it is of the worship of its devotees! In

place of the Creator, who is blessed for ever, it substitutes the

creature. It enthrones nature in some one or other of its phases as the

rival of the divine Being. It will not admit the visible universe, with

its laws, to be merely the vehicle through which God reveals himself

and his thoughts, but demands for it equality of homage with its Maker.

It does not claim for itself power to work miracles, and will not

believe that any are possible. It does not base its authority upon any

supernatural revelation, and denies that any is needful. Like Absalom,

in the gates it whispers in every man’s ears, “O that I were made judge

in the land!” and thus draws unwary souls into treason against their

King. It arrogates to itself the right to the whole of man’s being――to

all beauty and life, to all literature and art, to all recreation and

enjoyment, to the exclusive and undivided use and administration of all

earthly powers and faculties.

And how ruthless and cruel this spirit of worldliness can be! Does any

human soul, driven by dissatisfaction and heartache, seek to lift the

veil and penetrate to the secret shrine of the universe, or to pierce

the “rose mesh” of mystery that surrounds us and ascend to the divine

Spirit above and beyond it, how quickly is the fascinating smile of the

world turned to bitter scorn, and its smooth flattery to remorseless

persecution! With what haughtiness and assumption does it contend that,

in everything relating to music and poetry, to the æsthetic arts, to

finance and politics and social matters, the question of morals has no

place and God and religion have no right to enter!

To this beast, we are further informed, power, or authority, was given

“to continue forty and two months.” This number, it has been previously

said, is the symbol of an epoch which is limited and fractional, but

which has a definite purpose pervading it.

Throughout the whole period of Judaism this beast raged with all his

ferocity against the Church of the Old Testament. And, although the

wild beast next to be delineated was a more formidable adversary to

religion than even he, yet the temptation to fall into the ways, and

follow the practices, and to drop down to the religious level of the

ungodly world of heathenism around constituted a peril to the Hebrew

faith against which the prophets had need frequently to lift their

voices. And how constant even now is the peril to the Christian Church

and the Christian believer of falling into the worship of the same

beast of worldliness, is so patent a truth that every man’s observation

and experience are sufficient to prove it. The victims of worldliness

are, indeed, many, and to resist sorely tries “the patience and the

faith of the saints.” But its doom is sure and irretrievable, whether

that doom shall come by the sword of God or by captivity. Its own

methods of hostility shall be turned against itself.

3. _The Second Wild Beast, or the Spirit of False Prophetism._――In

attempting to solve the mystery of the second wild beast which John

saw we are confronted with a task much more serious than has as yet

been presented to us. Not only is this antagonist of Christ a more

formidable one than any hitherto encountered, but there seems an almost

purposed obscurity and indistinctness about the description, as if to

the seer himself the beast appeared in so vague and nebulous a form,

or else was of such composite and heterogeneous character, as to be

incapable of more exact delineation. The only way to reach the truth is

to seek out such features of the description as may be regarded plain,

and from them to advance to the more perplexing ones.

It will be noticed, then, that the second beast rises not as the

preceding from the sea, but from the earth; that is, from the Church,

not in its ideal state, but in its actual condition, as the field of

human activity and influence.

Again, it is noticeable that, while in the description of the first

beast the expression “it was given him” occurs again and again (much

more conspicuously in the original than in the translation), in the

case of the second one this expression is, in the main, although not

in every instance, superseded by words suggesting active agency――“he

doeth,” “he maketh,” “he causeth”――these being all various renderings

of the same Greek word. This would seem to imply that, while the first

beast is merely an emissary or instrument executing the will of another,

the second differs from him in that he has, or assumes to have, some

power of originating action, some causative agency, and that he regards

himself as having independent authority. While, therefore, the results

effected by both are the same (“He had power to give breath to the

image of the beast”), those results are brought about in different ways.

Another very important feature of the description is that, while the

distinguishing characteristic of the first beast is blasphemy――an open

and undisguised assumption of the prerogatives of God, with intense and

avowed hostility to him――the properties of the second are duplicity,

deception, and self-deceit――perversion of the truth rather than

antagonism to it; and hypocrisy, if more insidious, is far deadlier

than open opposition. He has the appearance of a lamb, while speaking

as a dragon. He is said to work miracles, or at least is said to

profess so to do, which the first beast did not. And he counterfeits

the work of God, in that by a peculiar mark he stamps upon his

followers his claim to them, as the divine Being affixes to his a seal

in attestation of his ownership.

One further remark may be made. Three times in the subsequent part

of the Revelation (Revelation xvi, 13; xix, 20; xx, 10) these two

adversaries of Christ are brought into juxtaposition, and in these

instances it is the first beast alone who is designated by that name.

The second beast has the synonym of “the false prophet.” The term

seems to mark his superior power or craft; to the malice of a beast

is added the higher intelligence of a man. The combination attests the

formidable character of this wily antagonist.

In this last-named feature lies a suggestion which may serve as a clew

to the interpretation of the symbol and unveil its mystery. A false

prophet can stand only in contrast with a true one. It will be needful,

therefore, to discuss, somewhat in detail, the characteristic functions

of the prophetical office as set forth in the Scriptures.

“The usage of the word [prophet],” says Cremer,¹ “is clear. It

signifies one to whom and through whom God speaks. What really

constitutes the prophet is immediate intercourse with God, a divine

communication of what the prophet must declare. Two things, therefore,

go to make the prophet――an insight granted by God into the divine

secrets or mysteries, and a communication to others of those secrets.

New Testament prophets were for the Christian Church what Old Testament

prophets were for Israel, inasmuch as they maintained intact the

immediate connection between the Church and, not the Holy Spirit in her,

but the God of her salvation above her. The prophets, both in the old

and the new dispensations, were messengers or media of communication

between the upper and the lower world.”

¹ _Lexicon of New Testament Greek_, third English edition,

pp. 568, 569.

“The primary idea of a prophet,” says Ewald,¹ “is of one who has seen

or heard something which does not concern himself, or not himself alone,

which will not let him rest. It wholly absorbs him, ... so that he

no longer hears or is conscious of himself, but of the loud and clear

voice of another who is higher than himself. He acts and speaks, not of

his own accord; a higher one impels him, to resist whom is sin. It is

his God, who is also the God of those to whom he must speak.”

¹ _Prophets of the Old Testament_, vol. i, p. 7. London,

Williams and Norgate.

“That which,” says Oehler,¹ “made the prophet a prophet was not his

natural gifts nor his own intention; and that which he proclaimed as

the prophetic word was not the mere result of instruction received nor

the product of his own reflection. The prophet, as such, knows himself

to be the organ of divine revelation, in virtue both of a divine

vocation capable of being known by him as such, ... and also of his

endowment with the enlightening, sanctifying, and strengthening Spirit

of God.”

¹ _Theology of the Old Testament_, §§ 205, 206. New York, Funk

and Wagnalls.

With these statements the concurrent testimony of the New Testament

is in harmony: “God ... at sundry times and in divers manners spake

in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews i, 1); “The

prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God

spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter i, 21).

It was, therefore, essential to the credibility and authority of the

prophet that he should have received some direct revelation from God.

The message intrusted to him to deliver must be from a source above and

outside himself. It was not sufficient that God spake in him; he must

be able to say that God spake to him. When to the student prepared

by the guidance of a teacher to receive them nature reveals its facts

and laws, these come to him as something external to him. They are not

suggestions or inspirations of his own mind, but owe their origin to a

source exterior to it. So likewise with the prophet. How the revelation

came to him, and how his hearers became convinced that God had spoken

to him, are questions that do not touch the truth of his message. The

important thing is that the prophet was the agent and representative of

God in delivering a message which had previously been committed to him.

Herein lay the distinction between the priesthood and the prophetical

office. A priest was a man on whom was laid the responsibility of

appearing before God on behalf of men; a prophet was one who stood in

the presence of men on behalf of God. A priest represented man in the

court of God; a prophet represented God in the court of human life. A

priest was man’s advocate; a prophet was God’s advocate. The function

of the priest was to intercede for his fellows; identity of condition

and tender sympathy with them were therefore prime requisites. The

function of a prophet was to deliver God’s word to man; strict fidelity

to his message and to the truth were his essential qualifications.

As the priesthood, then, was a type of Christ, finding its perfect

realization in him who laid down his life a ransom for us, the

prophetical office was a type of the Holy Ghost, whose work it is

to convey to man the message of God, whether it be of conviction, of

justification, of sanctification, of inspiration, or of assurance.

If, therefore, by a “false Christ” is meant one who usurps the place

of Christ and substitutes himself for him, demanding from men the

allegiance due only to the Son of God, then by a “false prophet” must

be meant one who unconsciously or purposely substitutes himself for the

Holy Spirit, setting forth his own conceptions or visions as the voice

of God.

“The characteristic,” says Oehler,¹ “of the false prophets is declared

to be that they speak that which they themselves have devised. These

latter are designated (Ezekiel xiii, 2) as prophets ‘out of their own

hearts,’ who ‘follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing;’ ‘they

speak,’ according to Jeremiah xxiii, 16, ‘a vision of their own heart,

and not out of the mouth of the Lord.’”

¹ _Theology of the Old Testament_, p. 464.

No stage of history has been free from such presumptuous prophets.

Their existence and the disastrous work they wrought are set forth

again and again in the Old Testament Scriptures. But that their

appearance in larger numbers and under more formidable guises may be

expected in the New Testament dispensation follows from a consideration

of the influence of Christianity upon human nature.

Unquestionably, one marked result of that copious effusion of the Holy

Spirit, which beginning at Pentecost has continued until now, was a

quickening of the human soul to a realization of its individuality.

Fifteen centuries of sad experience and a convulsion which disrupted

Western Christendom were needed to bring any large portion of the

Church to an appreciation of the privileges which inhere in this

individualism. Since the great Reformation of the sixteenth century,

men have come by freer study of the Bible to discern more clearly the

possibilities which it teaches of personal consciousness of sonship,

and of the individual possession by the Holy Spirit of every soul

availing itself of the privilege; although there have never been

wanting those who have discerned the possibility of individual

communion with the spiritual world.

In individualism lurks a danger against which no revelation can

absolutely secure us. I may transgress its prescribed limitations and

become excessive. It may strive after independence from its Creator

and put forth its hands to forbidden fruit. It may assume prerogatives

which the divine Being reserves to himself. It may substitute its

own imaginings and volitions for voices of God, and displace that

real spirituality which only the Holy Ghost can create with an

auto-spiritualism which is deceptive, illusory, and specious, the

precursor of spiritual and intellectual anarchy.

Our Lord gave warning of this peril when, predicting the trials which

should come, he said, “There shall arise false Christs, and false

prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if

it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Paul foresaw it,

saying to the Ephesian elders, “Of your own selves shall men arise,

speaking perverse things, to drawaway disciples after them.” It was

this which led John to write, “Believe not every spirit, but try the

spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone

out into the world.”

The writer of the Revelation had no need to go beyond his own memory to

find symptoms of this spirit. Already it had begun to manifest itself

in the apostolic Church. Simon Magus was a conspicuous but not solitary

example. In the epistles to the seven churches there are cautions

against “the Nicolaitans” and “the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself

a prophetess,” very distinct from those which denounce the pleasures

or the persecutions of the world. In the ante-Nicene age gnosticism,

with its pretensions to a theosophy more profound, a knowledge

more extensive and exact, a code of ethics more consistent, and a

self-denial more rigid than those of the faithful, was a more dangerous

adversary than the Roman empire; and we who appreciate the skillfulness

of its specious arguments realize that nothing but the providence of

God carried the artless and unsuspicious Church safely through the

peril.¹ And throughout the ages since there has been a continuous

reappearance of this spirit, sometimes within, sometimes outside

the Church; not always avowedly antagonistic to Christianity, but

assuming to be a more perfect form of it; not impugning the authority

of the Scriptures, but claiming to possess deeper views of their

esoteric meaning; not openly subverting the foundations of morals,

but superseding them by a show of a more austere and uncompromising

sanctimoniousness. It so puts on the appearance of a lamb that its

dragon nature is hard to detect. It has cropped out in Manichæism, in

Paulicianism, in Albigensianism, among hermits and pillar saints, among

pietists, mystics, occultists, and other professors of a strained and

exalted perfection and illumination to which only the elect initiate

can aspire, and from which the common masses of believers are excluded.

¹ Bigg, _Christian Platonists of Alexandria_, Bampton Lectures,

1886, lecture i, p. 35; Harnack, _History of Dogma_, book i,

chapter iv.

It is hard to describe this spirit by a single name. It wears so many

forms that no one word can comprehend all of them. Even the apostolic

pen failed to depict this adversary clearly or sketch its outline with

distinctness. Deceit seems to be the pervading and controlling element

of its being, and to affect both substance and form. But it has as

its usual accompaniment one mark which it stamps upon its devotees――a

scrupulous and rigid asceticism which deludes itself with the hope

of emancipation from the necessary conditions of earthly life, which

denounces as sinful things proper in themselves, simply because

they are natural or secular, and which aims at the profitless and

impracticable task of anticipating in this life the celestial state of

disembodied spirits. No creature can ever with impunity contravene the

laws imposed upon his nature. The abnormal and excessive development

of one side of man’s constitution is sure to involve a corresponding

atrophy of some other side, and thus the sins excluded by one system

of defenses find entrance through some other avenue left unguarded. And

the constant result of asceticism has been in the end to revive with

new power the worldliness it aimed to destroy; so that in this sense

the second beast gives “life” and breath “unto the image” of the first.

For the termination of all hyperspiritualism has been either in an

arrogant self-exaltation, the very opposite of Christian humility and

love, or in an antinomianism which, under the affectation of liberty,

gives loose rein to sensualism.

To the question, which thus becomes of vital importance, How shall we

“try the spirits” to know “whether they are of God”? John has elsewhere

furnished a sufficient answer: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus

Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth

not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is

that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come;

and even now already is it in the world” (1 John iv, 2, 3).

The central principle of all asceticism, in whatever form, and whether

perceived and acknowledged or not, is that matter is essentially evil

and spirit essentially good. It is in the contact of soul with body

and of spirit with matter that sin lies. Holiness, therefore, means

only the diminution or destruction of this contact. All bodily desires,

activities, and enjoyments, if they cannot be annihilated, must be

reduced to the minimum, that thereby the ascendency of the spirit

may be gained and maintained. Thus human nature is mutilated to half

its capacities. Religion becomes only a “concision,” not a process of

transformation. The problem of redemption is no longer the moral one

of the salvation of the soul from the guilt and pollution of sin, but

the metaphysical one of the liberation of the spirit from matter.¹

By such as hold this view of things the assumption by the Son of

God of the likeness of sinful flesh, his birth, his fellowship with

earthly conditions and experiences, can never be fully accepted; his

crucifixion is attenuated into a figure of speech or becomes a mere

parable, and cannot be the necessary means of our salvation.

¹ Möller, _History of the Christian Church_, vol. i, pp.

152, 153. New York, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892.

Against such a theory the Revelation is one long protest. Its keynote

is salvation through “the Lamb that was slain.” Nor does anything prove

so conclusively that John was the author of the Apocalypse as the fact

that in it, in the fourth gospel, and in the epistles which bear his

name, the central and fundamental truth was the same: “The Word was

made flesh, and dwelt among us;” and, “This is he that came by water

and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.

And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.”

The acquisition of knowledge depends as much upon a right method as

upon an earnest purpose. Alphabets must be mastered before sentences

can be read. No one can understand the higher mathematics who has not

been grounded in the fundamental axioms. And one of the axioms of the

spiritual life is that the Holy Spirit cannot be given until Jesus is

glorified (John vii, 39). Whoever does not accept, with all implied

therein, the exemplary earthly life and the atoning and sacrificial

death of the Son of God may well pause to reflect whether the spirit

which leads and moves him is indeed the Spirit of God, or whether it

is not the spirit of evil and untruth. We may not set limits to the

spiritual flights of which the soul is capable, but it must have a

solid basis from which to start; otherwise it wastes its strength in

aimless wanderings amid mazy fogs and vagaries.

The path of truth lies between extremes, and from either side of the

ridge along which it winds steep declines lead to dangerous abysses.

If a man, on the one hand, accepts to the full the reality of the

incarnation of the Son of God, and then does not advance to that other

revealed truth, that the Holy Ghost is of equal power and divinity and

that his mission is as wide in its range and as complete in its effects,

religion will be to him a thing of externals, of outward and mechanical

forms and rites. On the other hand, the ascetic who would aspire to

the full heights of the revelation of the Holy Spirit without accepting

what must precede success――the real humanity of our Lord, his cross,

his grave, his resurrection――will surely miss the path and be lost in

abstractions, fanaticisms, delusion, and deceit.

One last feature descriptive of the second beast remains to be

considered――the number of his name. “Let him that hath understanding

count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his

number is six hundred threescore and six.” If John meant to cover a

mystery he has certainly succeeded, for no explanation has as yet been

offered convincing enough to command the acceptance of the Church.

Unquestionably this is the most difficult to solve of all the problems

of the book, and the apostle is thought to intimate this in saying,

“Here is wisdom;” although possibly his meaning is that the special

need for wisdom lies in defense against the wiles of this adversary,

rather than in solving the mystery of his name.

The interpretation which has met with the largest assent is based on

the usage of employing the letters of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets as

numerals. Men have attempted to discover some name the letters of which

when added will give the numerical value six hundred and sixty-six.

The name which has secured the largest number of advocates is Lateinos

(Latin), which, written in Greek characters and numbered, gives six

hundred and sixty-six. By Roman Catholic interpreters who accept this

solution the empire of Rome is supposed to be meant; by Protestants,

the Church of Rome. Dr. Adam Clarke thought this solution to “amount

nearly to demonstration.”

In recent times many German and other scholars, mainly for reasons

based on a special theory of the date of the Revelation, prefer the

words Nero Cæsar, which, written in Hebrew letters, number six hundred

and sixty-six. Irenæus (died about 202), who attempted the problem, out

of many names preferred Teitan, possibly to suggest an analogy between

the attempts of Roman emperors to crush the Church and the unsuccessful

war of the Titans against the gods, without venturing to put forth his

opinions in more definite form. Very many other names of men, ancient

and modern, have been proposed, with greater or less plausibility; for

curiosity to decipher numerical symbols, when it possesses a man, holds

him with almost the fascination of gambling. But it is apparent that

the combination of names possible with only a few letters is so much

beyond computation that almost apostolical inspiration is requisite to

decide upon the right one.

To the word “Lateinos,” strong as are its claims, the objection lies

that the Roman or Latin empire can scarcely be meant, since the beast

John describes is evidently a spiritual power, not a secular one. Nor

can the Roman Church be meant, for it was not known as Latin in the

days of the apostle, nor for centuries afterward; and, as one design

of the Apocalypse was to comfort and instruct the generation in which

John lived, it would have been inconsistent with that design to select

a name which could have no meaning intelligible to it or to many

generations succeeding. There is wisdom in the words of Bleek:¹ “The

discovery that a definite name contains this number as the value of its

letters in Greek would not warrant us to assume the correctness of the

interpretation if other hints in the book respecting the beast did not

agree.”

¹ _Lectures on the Apocalypse_, p. 87. London, Williams &

Norgate, 1875.

Another explanation offered is that the number six hundred and

sixty-six is but a threefold repetition of the number six, John thus

intending to mark in the most emphatic manner that, however mighty the

power or long the duration of the beast shall be, it will inevitably

fall short of the completeness and permanence of Christ’s kingdom, as

six is less than seven.

Still another explanation proposed is that the number was originally

written with the Greek letters χξϛ; χ being equal to six hundred, ξ

to sixty, and ϛ to six. As χ (_ch_) is the initial letter of Christ,

ξ is supposed to be an emblem of Satan, being afterward so used by

the Gnostics, and ϛ is the initial of σταυρός, _cross_. The symbol, it

is said, refers to some Satanic power intervening between Christ and

the cross, some system which honors him as teacher but denies him as

Saviour, which accepts Jesus, but not “him crucified.” The description

accords well enough with that of the second beast; but whether it

can be extracted from the number six hundred and sixty-six is another

question. The monogram, while harmonizing with the symbolism of the

Apocalypse, and also delineating the nature of the beast, does not

explain the emphasis which seems to be laid upon his “name.”

There is, however, one detail in this part of the description of

the beast often overlooked, but which may carry us far on our way

to decipher the secret of the number. The number of the name is not

monopolized by the beast; it does not exhaust itself in any single

individual. We are told that “no man might buy or sell, save he

that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his

name.” The beast has followers who imbibe his spirit and partake

of his characteristics, and to whom his name and number are equally

appropriate. It is more in keeping with this statement, as well as

with other details, to interpret the beast as a principle rather than

a person, as being some spirit of evil which, assuming prominence in

some man or organization, is yet shared by many men and organizations.

The ascetic, false prophetism which fulfills the other details of the

description coincides also with this.

If, following out the rule of interpretation which has guided us

hitherto, and assuming that John drew his prediction of the future

from facts and tendencies existing in his day, we read the epistles

contained in chapters ii and iii, we shall find that among the perils

which threatened the apostolic Church none was more imminent than that

which is called “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” which was but a

reproduction of the heresy of Balaam, the gifted and formidable rival

and antagonist of Moses; the name Nicolaus, indeed, meaning in Greek

the same that Balaam does in Hebrew. So deep a mark did Balaam make

that throughout the Old Testament, as well as the New, he stands

as the representative, as he was the first example, of that spirit

of false prophetism which, beginning as ascetism, degenerates into

antinomianism and prostitutes genius to the service of the flesh. Now,

it is certainly true, as Züllig shows,¹ that the words “Balaam, the

son of Beor, soothsayer,” if written in Hebrew letters do make up the

sum six hundred and sixty-six. It seems, therefore, probable that some

embodiment of his insidious spirit, some reproduction of his deadly

doctrine, with its resultant lawless practices, is the solution of this

mysterious symbol, the second beast, against which John earnestly warns

the Church in all ages to guard itself as the most dangerous foe to the

kingdom of Christ. And possibly the archæological researches which are

now bringing to light much of the hidden history of earlier ages may

yet discover to us the sect which served as the basis of his warning.

¹ _Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse_, p. 285.

The interpretation which has here been put upon the symbols of the

two wild beasts――namely, that they represent, the one the spirit of

worldliness, the other that autospiritualism or self-centered piety

which, for lack of a more comprehensive phrase, may be designated as

false prophetism or false asceticism――derives some confirmation from

the fact that their resulting effects have been such as the author

of the Revelation predicted. Worldliness seems the baser of the two,

but its dominion is briefer and less stable. As the mind can never

be content with agnosticism, but must by necessity search for some

explanation of the mystery of being until satisfaction is gained, so

the heart can never fully rest in hopes and themes and joys which are

only earthly. The religious instincts inherent in and inalienable from

our nature will assert themselves and cry for God. On the other hand,

asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men

thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason

of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness,

under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others

by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless

slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions

of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark

shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty; it is the special

temptation that besets souls seeking after purity and knowledge; while

worldliness is that to which those are most prone who mingle much with

the world and deal with earthly realities. If, on the one hand, it

is easy for men to fall into the danger of using their heaven-given

faculties for the ignoble purpose of gratifying their lower desires

or of turning stones to bread simply that they may live, it is equally

easy, on the other, to wander into the opposite error of presuming

rashly upon God’s providence and mercy, although humility has

degenerated into boasting and love has been perverted to censoriousness.

From neither tendency can the regeneration of the world come; both are

alike enemies of God and of man.

4. _Anticipations of Victory._――It is one of the characteristic

peculiarities of St. John’s literary style to introduce a subject

which for the moment he merely suggests to our notice, returning to

it subsequently in order that he may amplify and complete it. He goes

over his work again and again, each time adding some new touch, with

the purpose of bringing out in greater prominence some detail of his

subject. While each section, therefore, contains in measure an epitome

of the whole, in each one some single point is more specifically and

elaborately discussed. There is, it is true, advance of thought; but

the eagle of the apostolic band moves in circles, bringing into notice

of his keen eye every part of the field over which he soars, while each

swoop of his wing carries him a little beyond his former orbit, so that

his progress is in spirals. The principle which controlled him seems to

have been that of presenting to us in sharp and striking antithesis the

contrasts between conflicting ideas, while he holds them under our

observation.

It is also characteristic of a disposition like St. John’s, and of a

life so contemplative and secluded as his was, to view things in the

light of their essential principles; not as they become, modified by

contact and in relation with each other, but as they radically and

germinally are. By consequence such minds, instead of being occupied

with the intermediate changes, pass at once to ultimate results and see

the end in the beginning.

An instance of this appears in the fourteenth chapter, which is

really but an epilogue to the preceding chapters. In the twelfth and

thirteenth chapters we have had presented to our vision the formidable

enemies with which the Christian believer must struggle. They have

been described most graphically and with a fullness of detail not

subsequently exceeded. The _dramatis personæ_ are all put upon the

stage, and no new actors in the tragedy of existence need be expected.

But these enemies are sufficiently numerous and terrible to excite

apprehension and awaken earnest inquiries as to our means of resistance

and possibilities of success. The seer, therefore, pauses for a moment

to review the resources put within our reach and to assure us of their

adequacy. “Greater is he that is in you,” he says, “than he that is

in the world.” And he fully indorses the emphatic declaration of Paul,

“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to

the pulling down of strongholds.”

In prophesying victory over the dragon and the beasts to the saints of

Christ, John separates them into two classes, as he had done in chapter

vii. This is not in any spirit of Jewish narrowness or exclusiveness.

He had long gotten beyond that and learned to call no man common

whom God had cleansed. Even Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision,

recognized a distinction between the Jew, who was first, and the

Gentile; so there can be alleged against John no bigotry in recognizing

the distinction, inasmuch as he foreshadows equal victory to both

classes. There can hardly be a question that by the “hundred forty and

four thousand” John meant Israelites after the flesh; for they “stood

on the mount Sion;” they sang a song which none others but themselves

could learn, namely, the song of Moses and of the Lamb ( xv, 3); they

were “the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb” (xiv, 4); they were

without “guile,” with reference no doubt to John i, 47. They were

“virgins,” having the true asceticism――freedom from ungodliness and

worldly lusts. There was reason for rejoicing to a Jew like John in the

fact that, in spite of the opposition of the rulers and Herods among

the chosen people to whom had been committed the oracles of God, and

on the very spots of the crucifixion and resurrection, so many of his

former co-religionists had become disciples of Christ and followed the

Lamb whithersoever he led them.

But the word of God is not bound, nor is it the exclusive property of

any race; and the seer immediately adds the vision of the multitudes

of “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” to whom “the

everlasting Gospel” was preached and among whom it found adherents. The

fullness of the times had come, and Gentiles might “fear God, and give

glory to him,” the one Creator of “heaven, and earth, and the sea, and

the fountains of waters.”

One new feature is now introduced. Babylon, which occupies so much

of the subsequent part of the Apocalypse, is here for the first time

mentioned. Babylon, it will be attempted to show, is not another

adversary, but an apostate Church which has succumbed to adversaries

and thereby become a counterfeit and rival to Christianity. It is here

brought upon the stage by anticipation, and its doom foretold, to give

completer assurance of the coming victory over all forms and results of

sin and evil.

The age in which John lived was an age of martyrdom. How severely

this fact tried “the patience” and faith of the early Christians we

know from hints in other apostolical writings. Paul found it necessary

to show to his brethren in Rome that if they suffered with Christ it

was that they might be also glorified together with him. Peter, too,

comforts those whose faith was being so sorely tried with the assurance

that the trial of their faith was “more precious than of gold that

perisheth,” and would be “found unto praise and honor and glory at

the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And so John gives to the Church of his

day the glad tidings that, although God buries his workmen, he carries

on his work; that they, if they died “in the Lord,” should “rest from

their labors;” and that “their works” should survive and go on winning

victories after their departure.

If it should be asked how or with what weapons they were to overcome,

John gives the answer which is found so often in the Book of Revelation

that it is one of the keys to unlock its mysteries――they overcome

“by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony”

(Revelation xii, 11); by which latter expression is meant, doubtless,

the Scriptures, as explained in the chapter upon the two witnesses.

That the two visions which now follow, the harvest of the world and

the vintage scene, refer to these two weapons of success furnishes an

explanation of them so simple and easy that it is strange they should

have occasioned so much difficulty to commentators.

The prophet Joel, from whose writings these visions are drawn (Joel

iii, 13), probably among the earliest and certainly among the greatest

of the Hebrew seers, appears to have been gifted with a foresight of

the future remarkable even for one of that extraordinary body of men.

The final and complete triumph of God’s cause over all opposing foes in

and through Zion, and the deliverance of the Church from all bondage,

oppression, and danger, preceded by a plentiful outpouring of the Holy

Spirit upon all classes, ages, and conditions, stood out before him

as a certain and assured fact. The details of the methods by which

this result was to be achieved were not revealed to him, nor is it

surprising that, being thus left to himself, he could conceive of no

other instrumentalities than those which in his experience of human

affairs had passed under his own observation. This is not the only

instance in which the apostles of the New Testament, while confirming

the prophets of the Old as to results, have discerned more clearly the

power of spiritual forces, and for swords and carnal weapons and rods

of iron have substituted the more peaceful instrumentalities of the

sword of the Spirit, the breath of the Messiah’s lips, and the staff of

the Good Shepherd.

The writer of the Revelation, expanding and evangelizing the vision of

Joel, saw “a white cloud,” and One “like unto the Son of man” sitting

thereon, “having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp

sickle.” “Out of the temple” an angel came and cried to him, “Thrust

in thy sickle, ... for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” Whereupon he

cast his sickle upon the earth, and “the earth was reaped.”

In these words surely a reference is to be seen to the words of our

Lord himself uttered in the hearing of John and recorded in Matthew

xxiv, 14, 30, 31: “And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached

in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the

end come.... And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of

heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a

great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from

the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

This metaphor of the harvest as the result of the sowing of God’s word

is one of the most common to be found in the Scriptures. “The sower

soweth the word” (Mark iv, 14), or “the word of the kingdom” (Matthew

xiii, 19), or “the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you” (1

Peter i, 25). “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed

into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed

should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth

forth fruit of herself [that is, automatically and spontaneously]....

But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the

sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark iv, 26‒29).

That “the word of God is quick and powerful” (Hebrews iv, 12); that

it has God’s life in it (John vi, 63); that it is the great weapon of

warfare, defensive and offensive, to the Church and the believer; that

it is the incorruptible seed by which men are born into the kingdom (1

Peter i, 23); that it is the instrument whereby we are sanctified (John

xvii, 17), is the concurrent declaration of the Scriptures themselves.

That it is to be preached by apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers

is the commission binding on all: “Go ye into all the world, and preach

the Gospel to every creature” (Mark xvi, 15). This Bible is sufficient

of itself, all other things are only ancillary; “in due season we shall

reap, if we faint not” (Galatians vi, 9). All literature and art and

culture and science are but as “the grass” that “withereth,” or “the

flower” that “fadeth;” “but the word of our God shall stand forever.”

And the martyrs of the apostolical age had the inspired assurance of

John to console them, that if they faithfully bore witness to the word

they might fall, but “their works” would follow on after them. And in

so saying he is only reëchoing the words which he himself had heard

from the Master, “One soweth, and another reapeth” (John iv, 37). And

John shows how completely he had gotten away from Jewish narrowness and

absorbed the Master’s spirit, in his recognition of the fact that the

Bible is for every nation and kindred and people.

The other instrumentality of victory put within the reach of the

Church, namely, the all-sufficient “blood of the Lamb,” is beautifully

illustrated in the vintage vision, which has most needlessly perplexed

commentators.

An angel――not now the Son of man――is seen coming “out of the temple

which is in heaven” with a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from

the altar, who is described as having “power over fire” (the same

combination as is found in Isaiah vi, 6), and at his cry the sickle was

thrust into the earth, and the clusters of fully ripe grapes gathered

and cast “into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”

It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing in them a

reference to Isaiah lxiii, 1‒6. By the great mass of believers the

words are interpreted as an allusion to and a prophecy of the atoning

work of Christ. It certainly seems that the writer of the Revelation

so understood them, not only from the connection of this vintage scene

with the blood of the Lamb, but also from Revelation xix, 11‒16, where

the same connection of the two themes, the “sharp sword” issuing from

the mouth of Christ, that is, the word of God, and the “vesture dipped

in blood,” with the treading of the wine press, is found.

Our belief in the plenary inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures

does not compel us to the conviction that they always comprehended

the full import of their message, or that all the particulars embraced

therein stood out clearly and plainly in their minds. This is one of

the instances in which prophets and wise men desired to see the things

which we in the kingdom of Christ see, but did not see them. Every man

in painting mental pictures must of necessity use colors with which

his own mind is acquainted, and which he has acquired by experience and

observation. And Isaiah and the other prophets, in the age and with the

surroundings in the midst of which they lived, had no other means of

conveying to the minds of men the true revelations which were given to

them of the suffering and victorious Messiah than terms such as they

saw exemplified in the world of history and in the men about them. Any

other terms would have been incomprehensible, and so have failed of

their purpose to help and inspirit. And the divinity of the Bible is

seen conspicuously in this――that the framework in which its glorious

pictures were set is capable of expansion to the times in which we

live and the larger views we have, without fracture or distortion. The

signs and symbols which by divine illumination were presented to them

have come down to us; but we, with the clearer light of the Sun of

righteousness, can read intelligently what were hieroglyphics to them,

and, looking with unveiled face, can behold therein the glory of God.

That John, in thus quoting from Isaiah, has Calvary and Gethsemane in

his thoughts is shown by his specifying particularly that “the wine

press was trodden without the city,” bringing out the truth, of which

Hebrews xiii, 12, is the witness, that “Jesus also, that he might

sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”

It is true that in the prophecy of Isaiah there appears an element of

vengeance and wrath that does not comport with our ideas of salvation

and redemption, and even repels. The element is still there; but the

New Testament teaches us that all that was lonely, painful, agonizing

in human redemption was borne by the Christ for us. We are “bought

with a price,” but he paid it. He was “made a curse for us.” He “bare

our sins in his own body on the tree,” and by his “stripes” we are

“healed.” However feeble may be the traces of vicariousness in nature,

human life is full of it, is built about it. All love is manifested

in vicarious suffering. Scarce any rise but that some fall; scarce any

become rich but that others become poor; there is hardly a smile or

a laugh of joy for which some pain is not felt or some tear not shed

somewhere. And, if God manifests his love by sending “his Son to be

the propitiation for our sins,” this is but an illustration of the

truth, as apparent in the spiritual world as in that of nature, of the

transmutation of forces; the sum not being increased or diminished, but

the places and modes of manifestation changing.

The remainder of the vintage scene may be easily explained, difficult

as it has seemed to most interpreters, by applying the key which is put

into our hands, if we accept the solution offered above.

We must now for almost the first time take up the prophecy of Ezekiel,

which from this place onward almost singly rules the Apocalypse,

and the careful study of which will throw light upon what seems most

obscure.

We are told that “blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse

bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”

Turning to Ezekiel, we find that the last chapters of that great

prophecy are taken up with a beautiful description, ideal and

figurative, doubtless, of the restored temple, holy city, and land

of the new Israel of God. In the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel the

dimensions of this ideal land are very carefully stated. The boundary

line of it was, on the north side, Hamath, in latitude thirty-four

degrees twenty minutes, and, on the south, a line drawn from Tamar, at

the southern border of the Dead Sea, to Kadesh, a brook emptying into

the Mediterranean. If, now, we measure on a map the distance between

these lines, we shall find it to be two hundred miles, or sixteen

hundred furlongs.

This whole space, comprehending all of the Holy Land, was thus entirely

covered with the blood which flowed from the wine press trodden

by the Son of God. Could there be a more complete statement of the

all-sufficiency of that atoning blood? It is the same truth presented

to us here which John has elsewhere in plainer prose revealed to our

faith: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

And as if still further to verify the statement he tells us that the

blood reached to “the horse bridles.” There is an allusion in this

to Zechariah xiv, 20, where we are told that in “the day of the Lord”

there shall be “upon the bells [or, as the margin has it, ‘upon the

bridles’] of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.” The ideal land is not

only covered in its whole extent with the atoning blood, but so deep is

the stream that it buries all beneath it, except where upon the surface

is displayed the significant inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.”

Surely there is no lack in the provisions of salvation. “Where sin

abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto

death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal

life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Thus, then, in these beautiful visions is it shown that the believer

and the Church are sufficiently armed for the encounter with any

antagonist, however furious or formidable. We are supplied with

“the sword of the Spirit” and “the blood of the Lamb.” Whatever the

tasks may be that lie before us, having these, we have all necessary

equipment. Nothing shall be able to harm us so long as we continue to

be followers of God.

If the harvest scene illustrates the extent of divine grace, and is an

emblem of the living seed which, small in its beginnings, grows into

a great and widespreading tree under whose branches all the nations

of earth may find shelter and rest, the vintage scene illustrates the

depth to which salvation penetrates. The whole extent of human need is

reached. Neither is there a want anywhere which may not be satisfied.

And through the use of the divinely appointed means the kingdom of

Christ may be brought to its ideal of perfection, in us and in the

whole Church, until God shall, indeed, be all and in all.

PART V

The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church

PART V

=The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church=

THE section of the Revelation which we now reach, and which extends

from chapter xv to the close of chapter xix, may be called the judgment

section. There is a striking parallelism between it and part iii, or

the vision of the trumpets, which symbolizes the methods through which

the kingdom of Christ is furthered. As that section divided itself into

two parts――first, the natural agencies which divine Providence employs,

and, next, the supernatural word――so, also, this sets before us what

may be designated natural judgments, and then those special visitations

of divine justice which await an apostate Christian or Church.

1. _The Judgments of God. Vision of the Vials._――The fifteenth and

sixteenth chapters need not detain us long, inasmuch as the resemblance

between them and the visions of the trumpets is so great that much

of what might be said has already been anticipated. Vials, or basins

rather, were vessels used in the Mosaic ritual as receptacles. The

term is used here to designate the judgments which must fall on men if

the warnings and messages symbolized by the trumpets are unheeded. The

Gospel, we are told by St. Paul, may be a savor of death unto death,

as well as of life unto life. The words of the Lord Jesus will either

become spirit and life to us, or they will judge us at the last day.

From “the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony” “seven angels” are

seen issuing forth with vials containing “the seven last plagues.” The

word for “plague” is the same used in chapter xiii, 3. It was there

applied to a temporary wound which was quickly healed. Its connection

here with the word “last” and with the number “seven” indicates that

the wounds or blows are final and incurable. The judgments are not

corrective and disciplinary, but retributive and irreversible.

The angels with the plagues issue from the temple of the tabernacle

of the testimony. This name is that which is applied to the structure

Moses erected in the wilderness and which contained the ark of the

testimony. Its use here implies that the judgments that follow are

to be found recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. The old word is

God’s faithful witness, bearing plain testimony to his righteousness

and to his anger at sin and iniquity.

Still further, it was one of the four beasts, or living creatures, who

put the vials into the hands of the angels; and, as the four beasts are

supposed to be symbolical representations of the animate creation, the

truth declared would seem to be that these judgments come as natural

providences, or by the operation of laws which the divine Being has

stamped on his creation.

The plagues fall successively upon the same places that are named in

the parallel vision of the trumpets――the first upon the earth; the

second, upon the sea; the third, upon the rivers and fountains of

waters; the fourth, upon the sun; the fifth, upon the throne of the

beast, darkening his kingdom; the sixth, upon the Euphrates.

It is very instructive to contrast these judgments with the beautiful

figures by which John, in the last chapters of the Revelation, seeks to

portray the glorious privileges and blessings of the perfected kingdom

of Christ.

Thus, in opposition to the “noisome and grievous sore” that fell “upon

the men which had the mark of the beast,” we have, in chapter xxii, 2,

the declaration that “the leaves of the tree” of life “were for the

healing of the nations.”

In opposition to “the sea” which “became as the blood of a dead man,”

we are told, in chapter xxi, 1, that “there was no more sea.”

As a contrast to “the rivers and fountains of waters” which “became

blood,” we are told in chapter xxii, 1, of “the pure river of the water

of life, clear as crystal.”

Over against “the sun” which “scorched men with great heat,” the

statement is made, in chapter xxi, 23, that “the city had no need of

the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did

lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”

And, while judgment fell on the throne of the beast, “and his kingdom

was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain,” we learn

of the new city that “the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it;

and his servants shall serve him.” “And there shall be no night there;

... for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign forever

and ever.” There seems to be in this a reminiscence of the plague of

darkness with which the Almighty visited Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and

which was the last one before the final stroke of his judgment upon the

firstborn (Exodus x, 21‒23).

The fifth trumpet was interpreted as a prophecy of the blindness, both

of heart and mind, which comes upon men when faith declines and grace

wanes. This interpretation appears to be confirmed by the judgment

which the plague of the fifth vial inflicts.

The locality of the sixth plague is the Euphrates. This river, as has

been previously said, was the boundary line between civilization and

barbarism. The mention of it implies that the last conflict in which

the kingdom of Christ shall engage will be waged to oppose an inroad

or outburst of barbarism. But as John presents this matter with fuller

details in chapter xx the discussion of it will be postponed until that

part of the Revelation is reached.

One new feature, which is introduced for the first time in connection

with the sixth vial, is the singular sentence, “That the way of the

kings of the east might be prepared.” The origin of this expression is

to be found in Isaiah xli, 2, to which it has doubtless a reference. In

that passage, “the righteous man from the east” to whom is given “rule

over kings” is, undoubtedly, Cyrus, whose advent and success are thus

foretold. And the meaning is that, as out of heathenism God raised up

that marvelous man as an instrument to accomplish his purposes in the

deliverance of his people, so there is such fullness of resources in

the reach of divine power that in any emergency or peril he is able

to find, anywhere, means to rescue his followers or his Church out of

danger.

Moreover, the apostle saw coming “out of the mouth of the dragon,

and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false

prophet” “three unclean spirits like frogs.” Over against the divine

Trinity, the kingdom of darkness and sin has its counterfeit trinity.

Each of its component persons has its emissaries and messengers. For

the final conflict all these will summon their entire resources. Behind

all attempts to foil and defeat the development and perfection of the

kingdom of Christ lie these evil powers. But their efforts will be

futile; inevitable destruction and doom await them; and the inspired

seer here merely suggests the judgment of which full particulars are to

be subsequently given.

2. _Babylon and its Doom._――No part of the Apocalypse has given rise

to so much controversy as that which now engages our attention; and as,

unhappily, the controversies have often originated in denominational

prejudices and intensified denominational bitterness, this section has

been made a shibboleth by which to test conflicting creeds. Truth is,

indeed, of paramount obligation. We have no right to accept or reject

interpretations of the Scriptures simply on the ground that they accord

with or are repugnant to our beliefs. It is no part of our prerogative

to sit in judgment upon the word of God or to force it to speak

according to our mind. And nothing is ever really consistent with love

which is not consistent with truth. If, however, the purpose of this

remarkable book is to set before us those spiritual forces which work

in the heart of every individual, as well as in collective masses,

there seems no valid reason why we should in this part of it depart

from those general principles upon which it is elsewhere framed, or

seek for latent meanings when one which lies on the surface is capable

of explaining and harmonizing its mysteries.

Are we to understand by Babylon the Church of Rome, or the Roman

Empire, or any specific body or association of men, religious or

secular? Is the revelation here given us an anticipatory epitome of

history, a foreshadowing of events that have already transpired and

are now recorded among the annals of the race? Is it a prophecy the

fulfillment of which can be known only by learned scholars acquainted

with history, upon whose information the wayfaring man and the

untutored disciple of Christ must depend? Is it a portion of Holy Writ

whose best commentators must be found in Gibbon and Hume and such like

unbelievers? Truly, then, Saul is “among the prophets;” and this book

is singular and anomalous among the revelations of God, whose purpose

has ever been to make wise the simple, who else would be cut off from

access to the sources of truth and light.

If any of the prophecies of this book can be proven to find their

exhaustive fulfillment in any particular and definite body, individual,

or event, so that when we have identified the body or individual or

event we have reached the whole purpose of the writer, then, of course,

its value as inspiration ceases or, at least, is materially diminished.

It may have an archæological interest as a record of past conditions,

but its influence upon the present and future is somewhat like that of

a fossil upon living types.

When the prophets of the old dispensation uttered their denunciations

of the luxuries, the sensualism, the cruelty, the gilded vices, or

the coarser sins of the cities and empires of the ancient world their

purpose was not to vent vindictiveness against conquerors under whose

might the Israel of God was oppressed and trampled down, but to direct

thought and attention to a spirit of evil, a principle of the kingdom

of darkness, which for a while found an embodiment therein, yet was not

wholly comprehended in it. The empires crumbled into dust, the great

capitals became masses of decaying ruins, but the spirit which animated

them lived on, surviving their destruction.

Such was, doubtless, the design of this Apocalyptic vision. Babylon

is a symbol of something that has its fulfillment again and again, but

is never exhausted in any manifestation. The generations of men, down

to the close of time, must watch for and be warned against the spirit

which it embodied, and every individual Christian, as well as the

Church at large, needs the caution which is here given him against such

forms of it as are likely to tempt him from the path of duty or safety.

Of all the hostile powers with which the Hebrew people were brought

into contact and from whom they suffered Babylon seems to have been

the most dreaded, and the animosity expressed toward it by the prophets

was emphatic and marked. Its approaching doom evoked no sentiment

of pity, but was hailed with unmingled satisfaction. What there was

about Babylon which justified such exceptional fear and dislike it

is, perhaps, not possible for us fully to understand, although we may

attain some appreciation of it.

Regarding Nineveh, we have reason to conjecture that its peculiarity

was intense and supreme secularism. No temple has been found amid its

ruins that was not merely the adjunct of a palace. The priest was the

servant of the king. All religious instincts and institutions were

simply tools which the haughty monarch unscrupulously used to carry out

his cruel and ambitious projects. Such a condition of things can never

endure long. It works its own destruction, finding its cure within

itself. It was the demoralization resulting from a similar condition

which sapped the strength of the Greek Empire of Byzantium and, by

isolating it from all allies or sympathy, led to its overthrow.

In Egypt the spheres of the State and of the Church maintained some

independence of each other. Vast as was the sovereignty of the Pharaohs,

it was not such as to encroach upon or absorb the functions of the

priestly caste.

In Babylon, however, still another condition prevailed. Here the

priesthood was the ruling order; the religious element dominated the

secular. The palace was a part of the temple. It is noticeable how

strongly in the prophetic descriptions of Babylon the Chaldean element

is emphasized. It is styled “the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency,”

“the land of the Chaldeans,” marking thus the supremacy of that order

of soothsayers, sorcerers, and professors of magic and occult science.

Babylon was a theocracy, but the god who ruled it was the prince

of darkness, not Jehovah. The Church governed the State, but the

Church was one that incarnated the spirit of worldly-mindedness, not

heavenly-mindedness. So that, in an altogether peculiar and special

sense, it was the rival and counterfeit of the true Church of God,

giving exercise to the religious instincts of men sufficient to satisfy

conviction and quiet conscience, while debasing them by turning them

into the channels of lust and sensual gratification.

Yet, as a matter of fact, the domination of Babylon proved less

hurtful to the Jewish nation than did the hostility of any other of

their great enemies. The form of worldliness which the Israelites

encountered in Egypt was such as almost to make them forget their

bondage in remembering the enjoyments they had found there. Their

actual experience in Babylon during the years of their captivity,

the lessons they learned and the comparisons they drew when brought

into personal relationship with its life, left no lingering love of

idolatry and cured them forever of any desire to worship its gods.

But the Babylon of the book of Revelation comprehends more than the

Babylon of the Hebrew prophets. The dangers which beset the Christian

would be far less than they are if the Babylon of this world, which

opposes itself as a rival to the kingdom of Christ, had no fascinations

beyond those which the great city by the Euphrates could offer. The

wily enemy of mankind is too subtle to depend upon any such powers of

attractiveness as were embodied in the capital of the Chaldean Empire.

And in describing the counterfeit of the kingdom of Christ the writer

of the Apocalypse adds to his portrait of Babylon features which are

used by Ezekiel as characteristic of another great capital, Tyre.

Babylon was never a center of commerce; in no sense could it be

described as a city whose merchants were princes. The same is also true

of Rome, and is thus adverse to the opinion that John meant to describe

the city of the Cæsars and of the popes. His delineation of Babylon

would apply to Corinth or Carthage in ancient times, and to Venice or

Amsterdam or London in more modern days, with greater aptness than to

the metropolis on the Tiber. In this alteration of the emblem in which

the writer of the Revelation indulges, in the blending and interweaving

of details descriptive of both the Babylon and the Tyre of the Old

Testament into the composite figure of the Apocalyptic Babylon, in the

transition from Isaiah’s sublimely ironical shout of triumph over the

metropolis by the Euphrates to Ezekiel’s sad and pathetic dirge over

the fall of the commercial emporium of Phœnicia, a clew is given us to

the interpretation of his meaning.

The influence of Tyre upon the Hebrew people and religion was always

deleterious, almost disastrous. The intercourse which began in the

magnificent Solomon’s love of show and splendid state and luxury,

and which was increased by the intermarriage of the royal houses of

Ahab and Jehoshaphat with Tyrian princesses, was fruitful of moral

degeneration. From the spiritual pesthouse upon the Mediterranean came,

first, Tyrian art, then, Tyrian wares, then, Tyrian idols, and, then,

the unbridled and lawless sensualities for which Tyre was notorious,

until Baal had displaced the golden calves set up by Jeroboam in Bethel

and had well-nigh overthrown the altars of Jehovah in the city of the

great King.

The Babylon which John saw and whose rise and fall he predicts was one

that embraced in itself the unbounded pride, the self-sufficingness,

the love of sorceries and dark arts of magic, along with the

demoralizing practices of a great mart of commerce――a mongrel figure

into which all forms of evil and sin were woven.

The probability, therefore, is that John meant to describe, not

any individual or definite city or Church, but the incarnation of

a spurious and apostate Christianity which, assuming the appearance

of the true, is animated by principles wholly destitute of and

antagonistic to the power and life of Christianity, and thus deludes

only to destroy.

This opinion derives confirmation from the connection in which the

section stands. Up to this point the writer of the Revelation has been

collecting his data, so to speak, summing up the elementary forces,

friendly and hostile, which have to do with the success or failure of

the kingdom of Christ. He has announced its fundamental principles,

the means by which it is to be carried forward, the enemies which

must be encountered. It now remains for him to show in a concrete form

the results. At the close of the Revelation he shows us the result of

success in that exquisite picture of the ideal true Christianity. But

before doing this he also shows the result of failure in the picture of

the ideal false Christianity. The antitheses between the two are drawn

out in sharp contrasts.

In chapter xxi, 9, it is said to him, “Come hither, I will show thee

the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” Here (xvii, 1) it is said to him, “Come

hither: I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that

sitteth upon many waters.”

In chapter xxi, 6, it is written, “He said unto me, It is done.” So

here (chapter xvi, 17), when the seventh angel poured out his vial a

voice was heard crying, “It is done.”

In chapter xii, where for the first time the field of battle is

described and the enumeration of the hostile forces is begun, religion

is presented to us under the figure of a woman who has fled to the

wilderness. Since then the trial is supposed to have been gone through

with, the long war has been fought, the varying moments of the struggle

have been detailed, and we are now brought to the summing up of the

issue.

In chapter xxi, 10, John is carried away “in the spirit to a great and

high mountain,” and there is shown him the woman in the form of “that

great city,” “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out

of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (verse 2). Here

(xvii, 3, 4) he is carried away “in the spirit into the wilderness,”

and he sees the woman; but now she is sitting “upon a scarlet-colored

beast, full of names of blasphemy, ... arrayed in purple and scarlet

color, and decked with gold.” She has failed in the conflict. She has

not come victorious out of the wilderness, as Christ did after his

temptation. She has made peace with her enemies. She has joined with

the flesh, the world, and the devil. She is no longer spotless and pure,

ready for her bridal with the Lamb, but has become a harlot.

Thus, once, Orpah and Ruth stood together by the side of Naomi, while

the Holy Land beckoned them all toward it. Ruth chose that better part

and, sheltered beneath the hovering wings of the God of Israel, found

peace and rest and an eternal portion with the saints; but Orpah loved

the blue hills of Moab and, though sadly and reluctantly, turned back

to idolatry and oblivion and spiritual death.

Such a conflict awaits us all; and the issue must be, either that happy

one hereafter to be more accurately described under the figure of the

New Jerusalem, or else that alliance with the powers of darkness which

John records in the emblem of Babylon.

The details of the description given of Babylon add further

confirmation to the explanation offered above. In chapters xii and xiii

the three great enemies of the kingdom of Christ were enumerated――the

dragon and his emissaries, the two beasts. In the present chapter

(xvii) they are represented as combined. The woman is seen sitting upon

a scarlet-colored beast. She is arrayed in purple and scarlet, but not

in “fine linen,” which is “the righteousness of saints.” She has in her

hand a cup, but instead of the sacramental blood of the Lamb, it is

full of “abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” She is not

“filled with the Spirit,” but “drunken with the blood of the saints,”

for “she hath cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men have been

slain by her” (Proverbs vii, 26).

It will be remembered that, in the description of the first wild beast,

it is said that when the deadly wound which it had received was healed

the whole world wondered after it in astonishment at the recuperative

power which it exhibited. But, at this vision of the woman allied

with the beast, with a commingling of the influence of the second wild

beast, even John himself wondered with great wonder at a corruption of

religion so complete and yet so enticing, a perversion so unexpected

and yet so alluring, a transformation so plausibly and artfully

accomplished. There seems to have been awakened in him something of the

perplexity he had experienced in looking at the second wild beast, as

if its duplicity were a mystery of iniquity beyond his power to fathom.

Once one of the psalmists wondered, as he tells us, at the prosperity

of the wicked, until he entered the sanctuary and there saw their

latter end foreshadowed. So, likewise, was the mind of John relieved

by the angel who came to him and said, “I will tell thee the mystery

of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her;” for as the curtain

was lifted the doom of Babylon was revealed to him and the mystery was

solved.

But, however plain the mystery was to him, it is assuredly not equally

so to us. The explanation which suggests itself to us the most readily

is not necessarily the most correct one; indeed, the words, “Here is

the mind which hath wisdom,” seem to indicate otherwise and to force us

to seek some meaning deeper than that which is most obvious. Although,

therefore, the expression, “The seven heads are seven mountains, on

which the woman sitteth,” apparently identifies Babylon with Rome,

either imperial or papal, it would satisfy all the conditions of the

problem as well, and be more in harmony with the principles on which

the Revelation is constructed, to interpret the expression as referring

to the great world empires which have successively dominated the

human race and cast their shadows across the path of centuries, and in

which John saw the embodiment of the world-principle, essentially and

perpetually antagonistic to the kingdom of Christ.

Of these world empires five had already fallen――Assyria, Babylon,

Persia, Macedonia, and the empire of Alexander’s successors. The empire

of Rome, which was the one existent in John’s days and the most compact

and formidable of them all, was the sixth. “The other,” he says, “is

not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”

Of this difficult passage many explanations have been offered, but it

cannot be said that they are satisfactory. Whether John anticipated the

fall of the Roman Empire and the establishment of another world empire

to succeed it for a brief period of time we are not able to say.

It would not be any impeachment of the inspiration of the apostles

to admit that upon matters relating to the time of our Lord’s coming

they were not able to predict with certainty. Christ himself said that

“of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are

in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father;” and we cannot concede

that his disciples were more fully enlightened than he. There are

indications that the apostles anticipated the personal manifestation of

the Master at a date earlier than has proven to be the fact, because,

looking through the ages, mountains appeared in their vision to blend

into one which we have found by experience to be separated by valleys

deep and wide.

But, inasmuch as it was revealed to John that prior to the realization

of the ideal kingdom of Christ there is to be a decisive conflict with

the combined powers of evil, as will be more fully discussed when we

shall have reached the twentieth chapter of the book, may it not be

that it is that final embodiment of the world-principle which he here

foretells as the seventh antagonistic kingdom?

“And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of

the seven, and goeth into perdition.” These words seem to imply that

this “eighth” is not a separate and distinct empire, but is that common

principle of worldliness which finds its embodiment in all the seven

and yet is distinct and separable from them. It is both immanent in

them and transcendental to them.

And there is, perhaps, here an intended and striking contrast between

this evil principle and the divine Being with whom it assumes to

contest supremacy. It was said of the Lord God Almighty, in the

adoration of the living creatures (Revelation iv, 8), that he “was,

and is, and is to come.” Of this counterfeit principle of evil it must

be said, “It was, and is not.” God is true, real, the same to-day as

yesterday and forever. He that hath received Christ’s testimony can set

his seal to this assured and blessed certainty. Of the evil principle

it can only be said that it is always vanity, falsehood, a lie. Its

past is all a bitter remembrance; its future a shadow, a deception, a

dream; and he that trusts it is a fool mocked with illusions that are

never realized and cheated with hopes that forever disappoint.

It is not likely that any world-kingdom comparable in extent and power

with those which in ancient times subjugated mankind will ever be seen

again. Christianity develops and cultivates a spirit of individualism

which is inimical to their recurrence. Since the disappearance of the

Roman Empire no successor to it has arisen. The empires of Charlemagne

and Napoleon were narrow and petty in comparison with that of the

Cæsars. Some such thought appears to have been in the mind of John

when he foretold that there shall be “ten kings, which have received no

kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.”

But the spirit of evil which finds temporary embodiment in these

worldly sovereignties does not disappear with their overthrow. It

incarnates itself in other and more dangerous forms. There are subtle

and cunning manifestations of this spirit which, by plausible and

enticing imitations of the religion of Christ, do far more than any

worldly kingdom can to overthrow true Christianity and substitute in

its place the counterfeit kingdom, the deadly rival which is designated

by the emblem of Babylon.

Without violating the spirit of charity, and in fealty to the

obligation of truth, it must be confessed that the history of

the Church of Rome has too often furnished just occasion for its

identification with the Babylon of the Apocalypse. Its worldliness,

its unscrupulous alliances with kings and princes to carry out its

ambitious projects, its disregard of moral obligations in the pursuit

of its policy, its ignoring of the demands of justice, honor, truth

and mercy, its persistent struggle to achieve and maintain temporal

supremacy, its awful claim of present and eternal mastery over the

bodies, minds, and souls of men, its luxury and wantonness, its

bloody spirit of persecution on the one hand, and, on the other, the

duplicity, the false asceticism, the assumption of the appearance of

the Lamb while animated by the spirit of the dragon, the substitution

of its own codes and edicts and ethics for the word of God, which have

specially characterized its religious orders and confraternities, are

sufficiently like the adversary of true religion delineated by St. John

to excite thought and induce self-examination.

But it would be unjust to charge to the account of systems

imperfections and errors which spring out of the inherent frailty of

human nature. And the spirit of evil against which the apostle warns

us has had unhappily a range wider than pagan or papal Rome or any

organization yet witnessed on earth. If that Church has too often

carried upon her forehead the title, “Mother of harlots,” instead of

the motto, “Holiness unto the Lord,” she has many a sister who must sit

beside her as of kindred spirit; and, if the one has been “Aholah,” the

other has been “Aholibah.” If, among her followers, she has numbered

both some of the purest saints who have trodden this earth and some of

the vilest sinners, and these, too, in her loftiest places, she is not

alone in the distinction.

There have been individuals and Churches calling themselves Christians

and Protestants that, like veritable Messalinas, have burned with

incessant lust after every form and fashion of worldliness, and

whose lovers, as Jeremiah says, have not had need to weary themselves

in seeking for them. There is too much truth in the biting sarcasm

of Heine: “Christianity was once based on blood; it now rests on

another basis――money. Wafers of silver and gold are the only ones that

work miracles in modern days.” When the solemn services of the holy

sacraments lose their attraction and are accounted dull and pale when

compared with the brighter light of social festivities; when prayer

meetings are sparsely attended, while glittering parlors are crowded

with guests; when the shouting of souls newly born into the kingdom

is drowned by the “chant to the sound of the viol;” when grief over

“the affliction of Joseph” is far less than the sorrow for the loss

of worldly prestige or patronage; when religion is used simply as

an adjunct to the social propensities or a synonym for liberality in

promoting financial enterprises――then there is need that we read again

the apocalyptic vision of Babylon, that we may avert the doom that is

certain otherwise to come. Destruction must surely be the end of those

“whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind

earthly things.” The vials of divine anger must sooner or later empty

their plagues upon all such.

In the selection and introduction of Tyre as the representative of

a worldly Church the apostle indicates the source from which danger

is to be apprehended. Tyre was a mart of commerce. Upon her ships

the merchandise of the world was transported, and it was sold in

her markets. Her trade extended to the ends of the earth, and by her

mercantile transactions she was brought into contact with the whole

circle of known nations. The close acquaintance and fellowship thereby

wrought with all religions, races, and customs produced its customary

result of lowering the standard of morals and, under the specious plea

of encouraging liberalism of opinion, led to apathy toward all religion;

while, at the same time, the increase of wealth, art, and refinement

created a love for luxury and worldly good. Corrupted herself, she

became in turn a source of corruption to others, and her intercourse

with Israel had a disastrous effect upon the chosen people.

In this lies the peril of contact with the world. It is the scene of

conflict; it may be the field either of defeat or victory. The Lord

Jesus prayed, not that his disciples should be taken out of the world,

but that they should be preserved from its evil. We are placed in it

that we may transform it. It is possible that all beauty, art, wealth,

culture, and commerce may be sanctified and made to contribute to the

redemption of the world. Every thought may be brought into captivity to

the obedience of Christ.

But it may, on the contrary, transform and corrupt us. Without the aid

of supernatural grace the influence of the world upon the Christian

is demoralizing and destructive. Whatever is without God is equally

without hope. Art, for instance, separated from its mission as

an auxiliary to morals and religion and made independent, becomes

artificial, and then degenerates into artifice. The world, instead of

being lifted to a higher plane, drags the Christian to its own level.

It is remarkable that Paul, whose facilities of observation were large

and powers of perception keen, when writing to the Romans, the people

of the eternal city, whose one dream and ambition in all her history

had been power, commended the Gospel of Christ as “the power of God

unto salvation;” but, when writing to Corinth, the busy center of

commerce and merchandise, full of wealth, luxury, and corruption, he

presented as the only influence which could correct these evils this

profound truth: “Know ye not that ye are not your own? For ye are

bought with a price: therefore glorify God.”

There has not been a period since the days of John when the lesson

which he wished to enforce in this vision of apostate and fallen

Babylon was more important than now. Between the age of the apostles

and the times in which we live a stronger resemblance exists than

between any epochs in the annals of man. The rapid increase of means

of transportation by which the ends of the earth are drawn together is

effecting that state of things which the consolidation of the civilized

world under the control of the Roman Empire produced. The boundaries

between nations are being effaced; and their easy communication with

each other makes possible an exceptional intermingling of languages,

usages, moral codes, and religion. There is the same tendency toward

the denial of all supernaturalism, on one side, and, at the opposite

extreme, toward an eclecticism which concedes some truth to all forms

of religion, while questioning the absolute truth of any, as that

with which the apostolic Church was confronted. There is an excessive

liberalism which, in its aversion to narrowness and under the plea of

enlightened culture, would abandon all that specifically differentiates

Christianity. But we will have read the records of the ante-Nicene

period in vain if we have not learned from them that an imperfect

Christianity, while it does not gain the world, does lose its own soul,

and that the regeneration of mankind keeps exact pace with the measure

of spirituality and purity which prevails in the Church of Christ.