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There remains a more fundamental question. Is the book really worth the labour spent on it? When we recover the original form and meaning, has it any living message for us to-day? The question is perfectly fair. Not only is it written in view of a definite historical situation which has long since passed away, but it embodies a theory of the future and of God's methods in the world, which are simply impossible for most of us to-day. The situation which forms the background is one of relentless persecution in which the sharp division between the Church and the world becomes emphasised. There is no question of permeating human society or the State with even the slightest leaven of Christian principles. Any such hope is postponed by the writer to the Millennial Age after the descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Meanwhile, it is war to the death. The Apocalypse does not suggest two opposing principles of Right and Wrong embodied in varying degrees in every institution and movement, even in the heart of every individual. They are represented absolutely by the Church and the Roman Empire. If the choice between the two called for a high degree of courage, it was at least clear cut and unmistakably defined. But the real difficulty of life is that this choice is so often confused and blurred. Where is the Mark of the Beast, and where is the Seal of Christ?

Equally different is the cosmic outlook. Apocalyptic presupposes a universe manageable both in duration and in extent. It had its origin in a definite act of God at a comparatively recent time, and it will come to an end in the same way. Heaven is literally above the earth, and intercourse between the denizens of the two realms is easily conceived. The earth, with man, is the centre of the universe. God is transcendent, Creator, and Judge in a literal sense, interposing when and how He will. Convulsions in society, and disturbances in Nature, are His direct judgments, decided upon and sent ad hoc, and the end is to come by a supernatural catastrophe. This way of looking at things robs the struggle between good and evil of its deepest significance; for in the last resort God can always cut the knot by the intervention of omnipotent power. He is a chess player who, when He will, can sweep His opponent's pieces off the board and order the opponent away to execution. This

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ends the game; but it does not win it. The battle against evil cannot be won by a mere destruction of evil men; but only by such transformation of their wills and personalities that they come to be identified with good. This is the method of love and of the Cross. It implies a slow and patient process. But it is the unshaken conviction of Christian faith that it means a completer triumph in the long run. Apocalyptic, on the other hand, is always impatient. It cries, How long? It looks for an immediate parousia and judgment. And the solution it finds in a display of power destroys evil; but it does not conquer it.

And so we hear even in the Christian Apocalypse a note of fierce vengeance, which instead of praying for its enemies and for the turning of their hearts, exults in their approaching downfall and punishment. Such a mood may be readily excused in view of the circumstances of the time; it springs, indeed, from a religious and ethical root, from the conviction that God is indeed a God of righteousness, and from the cry for justice. But it does not embody the highest conception of God or of the moral sense. The last word of Christianity is that God is Love and that sin can only be overcome by transforming the sinner into something better, not by burning him.

And yet our Apocalypse is not guilty of the worst excesses of later ecclesiastical thought. It does not teach an unending Hell of hopeless torments. There are indeed passages which might suggest this. In xiv 11 we read that the smoke of the torment of the worshippers of the Beast'goeth up for ever and ever.' In xix 3 the same phrase is used of Babylon. In xx 10 the Devil is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the Beast and the False Prophet; and they shall be tormented, day and night, for ever and ever.'

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We note, however, in the last passage that these torments are only for the three supreme embodiments of evil. Their followers are devoured by fire; in xix 21 their flesh is given to the birds. The contradiction between this conception and the previous passage in xiv 11, shows that we are far removed from any cutand-dried doctrine of an unending Hell. And in each case there is a direct quotation from Isa. xxxiv 10,

which refers to the desolation of the land of Edom; there is no reference to the unending torture of its inhabitants. It is obviously precarious to attempt to extract formal doctrine from rhetorical passages such as this. While we are bound to admit that the doctrine of Hell, with its everlasting and hopeless punishment, is in fact directly derived from the pictures of the punishment of sinners as presented to us in Apocalyptic literature, it represents the dogmatic hardening of a conception which was not really thought out. Annihilation of sinners or punishment till the last Day' is the general idea in these writers.

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This suggests yet a further difference which is not so generally realised. It concerns the life after death, and especially that which we call the Intermediate State.' When the final judgment was expected soon this was unimportant. The departed could be thought of as 'souls beneath the Altar,' living a kind of half-life, waiting for the resurrection from the dead and the assumption of their spiritual bodies or garments of light. The Apocalyptic scheme implied the death of some and the survival of others (in the Pauline Epistles, if not in the Apocalypse), with a speedy judgment and resurrection. Any intermediate state was so brief that its conditions could be ignored. In the Apocalypse, as Dr Charles rightly points out, the familiar pictures of the redeemed before the Throne, in chaps. vii, xiv, and xv, are 'proleptic,' anticipating either the Millennium or the final bliss of Heaven; they are not intended to refer to the present state of the departed. But the long postponement of the Second Coming, even if we continue to expect it in anything like its literal sense at the end of time, has dislocated the scheme. It becomes more and more difficult to conceive of increasing numbers of the departed existing for lengthening centuries in this imperfect condition. We rightly ascribe to them now the fullness of life with God and Christ; whatever we mean by spiritual body or resurrection we place it at the time of death. Therefore are they before the throne of God and they serve Him day and night in His temple.' Descriptions such as these are not to us anticipatory ; they refer to the state of the departed as we conceive it

now.

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It is, indeed, sometimes said that the insistence on these differences of outlook and the assumption that the Apocalyptic scheme was intended at all literally are based on a misunderstanding. We are reminded that we are dealing with poetry, not with prose; that we must not interpret oriental writers with their fondness for picture and their exuberant imagination as though they were matter-of-fact journalists. The reminder is useful, but it will not carry us all the way. We must distinguish between two types of symbolism or allegory. These may be illustrated by the difference between Watts' pictures and a 'Punch' cartoon. In the former we have, let us say, the figure of a woman with a broken lyre, and it stands for the abstract idea of Hope. In the latter we may have precisely similar figures, but in most cases they do not represent general principles, but concrete persons, countries, or events. So, when Enoch represents the nations under the figure of animals-sheep, bulls, lions, and so on-he is speaking symbolically of certain definite events, not merely allegorising facts of the spiritual life or recurrent tendencies in human nature and history, after the manner of Bunyan. He describes the actual nations of the world, and the details of their history under the cloak of this symbolism. And the point is that he passes from a quite literalistic survey of Israel's history in the past to his anticipation of the future, the setting up of the throne, the Judgment, the fiery abyss, the New House (i.e. Jerusalem on earth), and the Resurrection. Clearly, these are intended as actual events of the future, just as the preceding chapters describe what has happened in the past.

In the same way, when we read about the light of the sun being seven-fold, or of the sun and moon being darkened, it is not enough to say that light is a natural symbol of happiness and darkness of calamity. These are not merely poetical expressions for the joy that no man taketh from us, or for the gloom of separation from God. They denote something physical, an actual increase of the light, however brought about, which would be visible to the eye, or an actual darkness. The trumpet at the last judgment may not have been intended to denote a literal brass band,' but it did mean a sound audible to the ears of men. The stars

falling from Heaven implied an actual convulsion of Nature, though the details might be poetical or exaggerated. The Son of man coming on the clouds might not mean strictly His riding on the cloud as a chariot, but it did imply His visible appearance in the skies. The nearness of the end meant more than a nearness relative to the infinite vistas of eternity. No doubt there is a margin of uncertainty as to where the line is to be drawn between figure, allegory, and poetry on the one hand, and actual events on the other. But there can be no question as to the general method of interpretation. The Apocalyptic books were not written as allegories of the working of general principles, or dramatic representations of the triumph of right and wrong in the abstract, or of spiritual experiences of the individual soul. They expressed the beliefs of their age as to what was actually to happen in the near future. A fair parallel may be found in the sense in which the Middle Ages interpreted the beliefs in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Judgment; in the general thought even of educated people these were understood in a matter-of-fact way at their face value. Of course, in both cases, the interpretation included spiritual values; but it presupposed a primary literal meaning.

We hold then that these differences of outlook cannot be explained away. It is worth while insisting upon them, because it is only when they have been frankly recognised and allowed for that we are in a position to extract for ourselves the full value of the underlying spiritual truths. So long as we are trying to compromise, either by the pretence that our scheme of things is the same as that of the Apocalyptist, or by half-suggestions that his scheme was really ours, there is always a subconscious feeling of unreality. Even Dr Charles, though in general he insists so clearly on the necessity of the primary historical interpretation, seems once or twice to allow himself an undue latitude of reading modern ideas into our writer.

'John the Seer insists not only that the individual follower of Christ should fashion his principles and conduct by the teaching of Christ, but that all governments should model their policies by the same Christian norm. He proclaims that there can be no divergence between the moral

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